


Roots in the Seabed

by missmungoe



Category: One Piece
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Family, Fluff and Humor, Marriage, Parenthood, Retired Pirates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-18
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-11-14 23:58:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11218947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missmungoe/pseuds/missmungoe
Summary: It takes a while for him to stay.Throughout their years of leaving-and-waiting, he's left pieces of himself with her — his heart, and their son. That old, favourite shirt, and a dip in the mattress. His vivre card. And she’ll come to regret the last one, burning through the promise he gave her once, that he would come back. But promises are worth more than the paper they’re written on, and of course he can’t turn down the chance of making a memorable return.(the wisdom behind that decision is debatable — the fact that it's memorable isn't)





	1. small seeds

**Author's Note:**

> So I've been doing a round of these lovely flower prompts over on tumblr, and two of my prompt fills went well together, so I combined them into a two-part fic — and then went and wrote an additional two parts. Self-restraint? I don't know her.
> 
> First prompt asked for "daylily" (coquetry), "quince" (temptation)" and "sweet pea" (delicate pleasures). This fic is a slightly different take on my personal canon for them post Siren's Call, although the enduring happiness is the same.

It’s easy to believe he’s the most obvious flirt.

Oh, he’s _obvious_ , make no mistake, affections honest to the point of shameless, and he makes no effort to temper his appreciation. And he knows how to make her blush like he knows how to make her laugh, and the combination of the two usually leaves him feeling like he’s knocked back a shot that’s gone straight to his head. But then she has that effect.

And she’s not shameless in any sense of the word, but that doesn’t mean she’s any less obvious, her face too open to be convincingly coy, and her expression letting slip just about everything. And if there was any doubt left about what she’s thinking, the roses spreading across her throat and cheeks is evidence enough.

“She wants me,” he tells Ben, with a dramatic sigh, lifting his glass to his lips. “It’s obvious.”

“She’s your wife,” Ben points out, and Shanks grins.

“Beside the point.”

Ben shakes his head. “You’re an embarrassment.”

“Hey, she’s the one giving me bedroom eyes! And not subtly, either.”

“You would know,” Ben says, cutting him a look. “Nothing about you is subtle.”

“I have been told I have something of a presence, yes.”

“I was referring to the hair, but sure,” Ben muses. “Let’s go with that.”

“You wish you had my hair,” Shanks counters.

“Every day,” Ben deadpans, not missing a beat.

Shanks lifts his glass, salute punctuated by a cheeky grin. “Always knew it.”

Tipping it back, his eyes seek hers across the room — finds them dark and inviting, and the warmth that drops into his gut has little to do with the drink.

He holds her gaze as she makes the rounds, weaving between tables with an ease that doesn’t require her full attention, land legs sure and steady; a captain in her own right, no ship under her feet but her authority a fact. And her attention she reserves for him, and the promise in her eyes makes the air in the room seem heavier, the muted babel pushed to the far corners, leaving a vacuum where it’s difficult to remember that there’s more than just the two of them present.

“Well,” Yasopp speaks up, after a lengthy pause, and the vacuum yields, like the room itself heaves for breath. “I’m calling it a night, before Boss drops his pants.”

He gets a crude gesture for that, but Shanks doesn’t drop his eyes from Makino, making her way over to the bar now. He tucks his grin behind the rim of his glass. “Don’t tempt me, Curly. I just might.”

“Whose pants are dropping?” Makino asks, stepping up to where they’re sitting. She takes one look at his shorts, gaze lingering a beat on the cheerful floral print, before she’s lifted them back to his. “Is it too much to hope it’s yours?”

Shanks chokes on his drink, and Yasopp barks a laugh. “For all our sakes, Ma-chan, at least wait until we’re out the door.”

“No promises,” Shanks coughs, the burn of the drink having cinched his throat tight, but it’s a feat keeping his grin off, and when she passes him by her touch remains longer than she does, fingertips sketching, light and meaningful across the back of his neck.

He catches Yasopp’s mutter about _honeymoon ought to be over by now_ , and sticks his tongue out. Ben hides his grin behind his glass.

The hour creeps beyond Makino’s closing hours, and the room clears, little by little. Shanks retreats to check on the baby — finds him asleep, breaths heavy, and none of his own worries to wear on that little heart. And it’s almost too easy to lose himself, watching him sleep; easy to forget, all his worries and burdens, under the spell of those soft breaths.

It’s easy — like it’s easy to forget when he’s home, that there’s a sea beyond the port. And it’s impossible to forget, when he’s gone, that he has made a home here, with all that entails.

Re-entering the common room, it’s to find the others having taken their leave, and then it’s just the two of them, a bottle of scotch on the counter between them, and her laughter takes on a different quality — that soft, breathless thing that’s accompanied by the curl of her toes where she’s kicked off her shoes, and she’s dragged her stool so close there’s no part of them that’s not touching.

“Those glasses are still going to be dirty tomorrow at this rate,” Shanks muses. “And you used to be such a stickler for routines. I can remember a time you wouldn’t even kiss me before you’d mopped the floor.”

The nudge of her leg offers a soft reprimand, and he catches it, running his thumb over the arch of her knee, seeking bare skin. A different creature now, two glasses into the bottle and with privacy a fact, she doesn’t bat his hand away when he pushes her skirt up, and the gleam in her eyes chases the years off his back, off his heart.

“I haven’t seen you in three months,” she reminds him. “The glasses can wait.”

“You sure? This place might go under if you do.”

She pinches his thigh for that, and he catches her hand — traps her fingers between his, to tug her knuckles close for a kiss, and nips at her fingers when she tugs at his beard in retaliation. “Although while we’re on the subject of the past three months _,_ I’d like to remind you that I suggested a quickie when I walked off the ship earlier,” he says, brows lifting. “You’re the one who didn’t take me up on the offer. Regretting that now, are we?”

“ _You_ ,” Makino laughs, and the word holds too many things to count — an endearment, a fond reproach, contentment and that soft disbelief, as though he can still surprise her. “Sometimes I find it hard to believe you’re almost forty,” she says. “Twelve years, and you haven’t changed one bit.”

Before he can offer a comeback to that, preferably something glib, she tilts her head an adds, flicking her eyes low, “Well. Your dress-sense used to be a little more discreet.”

“Still on me about the pants,” Shanks sighs. Then, brow raised in challenge, “You’re welcome to take them off, you know. No one’s stopping you.”

He hears her hum, and catches the downwards direction of her gaze, openly bold now, and in a way that makes his grin stretch, unabashedly pleased. Then — “That pattern is stopping me,” she quips, dark eyes bright with laughter when he chokes in outrage. “But if you remove them, I might change my tune.”

He shakes his head, but his heart feels light with her presence, and when he tightens his grip on her thigh she shifts closer, small shape seeking his.

And for all her claims to the opposite, he has changed, Shanks thinks, watching her. There’s little of his old restlessness left, and he wonders if she’s felt it — if it’s as obvious as the rest of him, that it’s not the sea his heart seeks now, for rest.

She’s never asked him to stay, and he doubts she ever will, although looking at her now, fingertips tracing the pattern on his shorts, almost absently, he has the sudden thought that he wouldn’t mind if she did.

Because he wants this, he realises — the little things that are his. Their son sleeping, and a bottle shared between them. Little, intimate pleasures; small hands that never stray far from where he is, and her gentle humour, the one that can so easily be wicked as entirely innocent. And they might be married and entirely too obvious, but that she can still catch him off guard with the latter is a marvel, and anything but a given.

The nudge of her glass against his own yields a tender sound, and, “I’ve missed you,” Makino says softly. And it’s the closest she’ll come, Shanks knows, to telling him that she wishes he’d stay longer — that he’d _stay_.

He knows the answer he’d like to give her, but it’s in the scars that he feels the only answer he can give, although he’s never been more tempted to be selfish and choose the former, Teach and the New World be damned. And she knows, which is why she won’t ask. The only thing she’s ever asked of him is to come back, which is a terribly small thing, given all the things he’s asked of her — for her patience, and to have her for wife, both of which she’d accepted, and without so much as a pause for breath, let alone for thought.

“You have, huh?” he asks, palm curved around her knee. He finds her pulse, the skin above it soft and yielding.

“Hmm.” She flicks her eyes to his, laughter in them, and something far more tender. “Enough that I’m willing to forget about the pants.”

His hand gripping her knee tips her off the stool, startling a laugh when she falls against him, before she’s stifled it in his shirt, along with the reprimand that they’ll wake the baby at this rate, and then it’ll have to be a quickie, and he’ll only have himself to blame if they can’t get him to go back to sleep, _and —_

And it’s good to be home, he thinks, and surrenders to that thought — and to her, whatever parts of himself he can. And it would be all of them if he could, but even if it isn’t, not yet, he’s never once doubted that it’s enough.

 


	2. deep roots

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt asked for "zinnia" (I mourn your absence). So in Sea Songs, Makino forgets his vivre card when she leaves Fuschia for the New World, but I couldn't let go of the idea of how she would have reacted if she'd still had it in her possession during Shanks' (inevitable, at least in all my fics) fight with Blackbeard.

It’s a well-rehearsed routine. He leaves, and she waits, and he comes back. He stays a while, then leaves again. But she’s used to waiting; has endured the long hours, the weeks and months. They’re hers, and even waiting, she’s never been idle. A creature of small habits, she’s never short of things to occupy herself, to distract her attention and her heart both. She has her bar; her village, her life.

But waiting takes on a different meaning, when it’s no longer just her. And even loneliness was easier, Makino thinks, than this.

“Da?” her son asks, little hands pressed up against the window, smudging the glass. On the sea beyond, a ship is making its slow crawl across the water, sails white against a pewter-strewn horizon, but easily discernible for young eyes used to searching for similar sights.

She doesn’t allow her heart the chance of hoping — knows better than to let it, and it doesn’t take her more than a glance to know it’s not the ship he seeks. And, “No,” she says softly, with a kiss to his hair.

Her son goes back to patiently watching the sea, and her heart breaks a little further. Because that enduring patience is hers, Makino knows, but that optimism — that never-failing, ever-bright thing that can’t seem to find defeat anywhere, even in little losses, is so very much his father’s legacy, she thinks it ought to be a mercy, but it isn’t.

And the worst thing about waiting is the uncertainty — the answers she doesn’t even have for herself, let alone for the boy who’s barely old enough to formulate the questions, but they greet her every day, with every ship on the horizon that isn’t his, and every newspaper that leaves her hands shaking too much to hold a glass steady.

But she waits, anyway — swallows the uncertainty, says _no_ , and _maybe_ , but kindly, and kisses her son’s hair, his round cheeks. Because there’s nothing else to be done, and she has nothing but kindness to offer, and patience. _Faith_. The first is easy, the second a thing of long practice; a river stone worn smooth, enduring strong currents without budging.

The last is harder, and infinitely so, because it’s not a river that tests it, but a whole sea, and even faith in the man who sails it doesn’t change the world that’s theirs — the one that has neither patience, nor kindness, for pirates.

 

—

 

One night, she wakes to his vivre card burning.

It takes her a moment to realise what’s wrong — for her mind to catch up, but then she’s scrambling off the mattress, sleep banished with a single breath, and she can barely manage another, the sheaf of paper in her hands blistering her fingers, her palms, but she can’t let go of it, even as it burns and burns and it doesn’t _stop —_

Her son sleeps, undisturbed, that little heart unawares even as her own breaks, and Makino paces the floor of her bar, not just uncertainty to keep her company now, but helplessness and frustration, both patrons she never asked for, their thirsts unquenchable, and she has nothing to serve them but her tears, stubborn and silent things that they are.

And there’s nothing to _do_  — nothing to clean, all her glasses polished and no habits or small routines to distract her, and fire continues to eat away at the paper as the sun creeps through the windows, her hands raw and white-blistered from clutching it, but she couldn’t have found a single care for the pain, gripping it — the only tether she has, save the little boy sleeping upstairs, to a man who’d promised her he’d come _back_.

She paces until she’s on the brink of exhaustion, but sleep won’t find her, even as morning does, and Dadan, shouldering through her doors as she’s made a habit of doing, before she stops — takes one look at Makino seated alone at one of the tables and _knows_.

Then there are strong fingers prying hers open, and the sliver of still-burning paper is removed, such a small piece left there's barely anything to hold on to, but Dadan has no patience for her protests, even if she barely has the strength to muster them.

“Damn this thing,” she spits, and her hands aren’t gentle, have never been that, but it’s a kinder pain than the burn, Makino thinks, absently. “Fool should have known better than to give it to you in the first place. The hell’s it even good for?”

Makino doesn’t answer, and the grip around her hands tightens — the pain startles her back into awareness, but when she looks at Dadan it’s not anger she finds on her face, but regret, although it’s by no means any kinder.

And it’s what does it — what drags the sob loose of her, a harsh, ugly thing, and so ripe with grief her entire body heaves from it.

And Dadan’s hands may not be gentle, but the fierce grip around her shoulders when she pulls her close is unyielding, and with everything coming apart around her, Makino thinks it’s all that’s keeping her from following suit.

 

—

 

She wakes in her bed later, disoriented, eyes raw from crying and with a headache that echoes.

“—and even the damn paper doesn’t say anything,” comes Dadan’s voice, drifting up from the common room below.

A muffled voice rises in answer, although Makino can’t tell who it belongs to, but the topic of conversation doesn’t need explaining, and as her mind drags itself out of its exhausted slumber, it comes back to her — the long night, and the paper that had burned itself to cinders.

Her hands hurt, but she’s tucked them under the pillow, out of sight. It doesn’t smell like him anymore — it always stops doing that, when enough time has passed in his absence.

Dadan’s voice again, rising in volume — before a high-pitched, elated laugh cuts it off, and she thinks it should be a comfort, that their son doesn’t know what’s going on, but there’s no comfort to be found anywhere, not in that loud laugh or the sea breeze, or the gulls who go about their day as though it’s any other. Nothing amiss, in her little corner of the world — not so much as a ripple felt from the sea beyond the horizon.

For a while all she does is lay there, in the bed that’s too big without him, eyes fixed on the chair hugging the wall opposite, and the shirt hanging over the back of it. Strange, that one little detail, but she can’t drag her eyes away, feeling with a surge of sudden dread that if she does, even for a moment, it will vanish, too.

And with the thought comes the sobering realisation that there aren’t many things left of him in her life, save their son. Nothing but that old shirt, and the slight dip in the mattress that she’s afraid is just part of her imagination — her mind grasping at straws, when there are barely any to catch to begin with.

 _Seafaring hearts don’t leave roots_ , the old saying goes, but his heart had, Makino knows, and even if she doesn’t have anything else, she has one thing that’s more important than any other physical reminder — a single, stubborn sprig, his small roots dug deep.

It takes her a while, to summon the strength to get out of bed — to make herself walk downstairs, to the bar she’s supposed to be running, but there are no patrons present, save the lingering reminders of the ones who’d kept her company through the night, following at her heels now. And taking in the nearly empty room, she has a thought to wonder if the rest of the village have all heard.

A silent sentinel, Dadan is there, her expression grave, but the little boy on her arm seems cheerfully unperturbed by the fact, small hands buried in her mass of copper curls, and the delighted _mama!_ that greets the sight of her tempts a fleeting smile to Makino’s face, even if it’s fallen with her next breath.

She doesn’t glance at the newspaper, laid out on the table, and she doesn’t have the heart to ask about the vivre card — if there’s anything at all left of it. Because Dadan’s silence says enough, and if it had taken strength to get out of bed, it takes everything she has just to keep herself standing now.

Ace changes hands, small arms wound around her neck and his father’s smile pressed with a kiss to her cheek. She has to sit down, but the weight of him in her arms anchors her from crumbling completely.

“You’ll eat,” Dadan says simply, and there’s no room in that order for anything but agreement, even if she couldn’t have dredged up an appetite with a gun to her head. But it gives her something to do — gives her some kind of _direction_ , when she can’t even will her body to answer to her commands, simple as they are (breathe, move,  _live_ , but beyond the first two, she doesn’t know how to go about doing the last).

“And then?” Makino hears herself asking, because it’s one thing to know what to do, this minute, the next hour, but what about tomorrow, and the day after that? The weeks and the months?

She already knows the answer, like she’s always known it, and, “Then we wait,” Dadan says, as though it’s that simple — as though it always has been.

Except that it doesn’t feel simple at all, Makino thinks. Instead, the one thing she’s always been so good at doing has never felt further beyond her capabilities.

 

—

 

She waits, but there’s no word. No one answers her calls when she makes them, and there are no calls made to her, no matter how long she stares at the Den Den Mushi, willing it to make a connection, one way or the other, grief pushed to frustration pushed to _anger_ , until she’s just about ready to chuck it across the room.

Even Garp has no answers for her, and she tries to keep her voice even, and from letting slip everything she feels, but less than thirty seconds into the call and she can’t see past the tears, and Garp’s silence is the loudest she’s ever heard it — louder than her sobs, muffled by the pillow that doesn’t smell like him anymore, so as not to wake Ace.

 _“I’ll let you know,”_ Garp says, voice rough with something she might have called grief, but that she knows would rather answer to anger. _“Pirates like Red-Hair don’t just drop off the map. If he’s alive, I’ll personally drag his crippled ass back myself.”_

It’s meant to be comforting, Makino knows, in Garp’s own way, but —  _if he’s alive_ , she thinks. _If,_ and never has a single word sounded so damning.

But she waits. For weeks, she waits for word, or for anything that’s not the crippling helplessness of not knowing. Weeks of uncertainty and doubt, seeds sown deep and growing strong. The papers give her little —  _Blackbeard defeated. The New World on the brink of war. The Revolutionary Army moves._ Innumerable casualties, the list seeming never-ending, but none of them the one she fears to have confirmed, and she thinks she might have taken some heart from that, if the uncertainty hadn’t felt like the worse alternative.

“Da?” her son asks, not at passing ships now, just a small query offered to the quiet that’s crept into her life; the one that’s come to stay, not just a visiting patron but a regular, unasked-for but wholly uncaring of the fact.

She doesn’t have the heart to tell him _no_ , and so she tucks him close and kisses his hair, bright red around her fingers as she threads them through the soft strands; kisses the freckles on his nose, scrunching up under her attentions, and the spluttering giggle that greets her is a small relief, when she has few of those.

Another week passes, and there’s still no word on Shanks. And with her newest patron come to stay, the quiet persists, lead-heavy in his absence, weighing down over her head, on her back, and with a slowly dawning realisation that it takes weeks to finally sink all the way into her heart.

And it’s with that heavy heart Makino finally reconciles herself with the fact that he won’t be coming home.

 

—

 

She sleeps on his side of the bed now, in that small dip, the mattress still too big, like the shirt wrapped around her. A pitiful substitute, remembering a body that had always been a little too warm, and that had always laid claim to so much room, the curve of it always seeking hers, even in his sleep.

Now there’s nothing, just that empty space behind her back — space that didn’t even exist, before him. But now it does, and like his absence it’s impossible to ignore, seeming to claim more of her life than even he did, when he was in it.

And she’d only ever slept poorly without him the first few days after his departures, before her body adjusted again, to being alone. She’s good at that — adjusting, like she’s good at waiting. But it’s like her body knows now, that she’s not waiting anymore, and so the prospect of adjusting to a life without him in it makes some long-buried, rebellious part of her recoil at the thought.

She hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in weeks, waking at odd hours, restless and uncomfortable, hands reaching for nothing and the mattress cold beside her. She wonders how long until she can sleep through the night — doesn’t know if she wants to reach that point, where acceptance has turned to complacency, to normalcy, and where _sleeping_ without him and _living_ without him are one and the same.

But oh, she’s _tired_  — is exhausted beyond belief, from the grief and the no-longer-waiting, and acceptance feels more like solace now, than defeat. As though her body craves it, even as the rest of her clings, stubbornly, to that slowly wilting refusal that doesn’t want to let her move on.

It’s one of those nights, the late-summer temperature almost unbearable, and she keeps waking, pulled out of sleep before it’s had the chance to claim her fully, drawn by small noises — the imaginary echo of a door creaking below, and footsteps on the stairs. Sheets kicked off, she’s curled herself up — has made herself small and unbreakable, limbs coiled in a tight cage around her heart; that smooth, polished stone.

A touch against her cheek, but she knows she’s dreaming — has had many dreams like this, tired mind grappling for even the smallest reprieve, and so she doesn’t think much of it at first, only turns her head into the pillow, eyes squeezed shut and willing her exhaustion to drag her under.

But then there’s movement — the mattress dips, jarring her, and the fingers curled under her chin move to thread through her hair, and, “I thought this was my side of the bed,” comes the murmur, the warm timbre she’d recognise anywhere, even half-asleep, and half-delirious from the lack of it.

It takes a second, but then she’s shot upright so fast she nearly falls off the bed, slamming right into the solid body seated on the edge of the mattress where she’s laid her small claim, and the hand leaves her hair to curve around her shoulder, steadying her.

The touch jerks something loose within her — yanks the rest of her bodily out of her half-slumbering disorientation, but it doesn’t disappear as she starts awake, the cup of that world-worn palm gentler than the strength the grip of it suggests; the strength she knows sits in that hand.

The pressing dark makes it hard to see anything, but she catches the flash of a familiar smile — finds the sharp cut of his jaw, and the shadows climbing up his throat, beard darker than it was, and his hair longer. And there’s a strange, almost detached thought slipping through her confusion, that it doesn’t make sense for her mind to have conjured him so _changed_.

Shanks tilts his head then, eyes dark under the shadows of her bedroom —  _hers_ again, after it stopped being theirs, and the thought is a small one, but it’s what shoves her fully into realisation, and the breath that drags from her pulls a sob with it.

And then she’s thrown herself at him, hands that have so long been reaching for nothing finding purchase, in warm skin and hard muscle, his spine curving under her fingers, but he’s flesh-and-bone solid, no dream-conjuring, and _living_ , soft laughter rising up under the beat of his heart, and—

“What—” she croaks, pulling back, hands shaking on his shoulders and brows dipping as another realisation follows at the heels of the first.

She sees them now, squinting through the dark — the bandages visible through the gap in his shirt, white gauze where she’s used to finding bare, sun-darkened skin.

His smile turns crooked, the twist of it barely discernible through the dark, but, “I’m tempted to say that I’ve turned over a new leaf and abandoned my general indecency now that I’ve tipped forty, but I have a feeling it sounds funnier in my head,” Shanks says, and it pulls her eyes from the bandages and back to his.

Her mouth works, and her voice is little more than a rasp in the quiet. She has no mind for wit. “Your vivre card—”

He winces, as though struck. “Yeah,” he says, the word roughened with regret. “I was technically dead, for about a minute, but Luffy’s doctor is really good. Surprising, for someone with hooves, but I’ve seen weirder things. I think. Honestly, he’s got a skeleton in his screw, so who am I to judge the talking reindeer?”

She can't make sense of what he’s saying, but he’s _talking_ , and she’s touching him, and for a moment it’s difficult to think beyond those two things; the two things that are suddenly everything.

Some of her thoughts must show on her face, bright enough to be visible even through the dark, because his smile softens, from that wry, crooked thing into something keenly remorseful.

His hand touches her cheek then, and Makino starts. “I’m sorry,” Shanks says. “For leaving it with you. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Not so much right now.” The sigh loosed from his chest fails at being a laugh, and it makes his shoulders hunch; but they’re steady under her hands, her fingers trembling against the loose collar of his shirt above the bandages.

“The ship looks worse,” he adds, at length. “What’s left of it, anyway. We, ah, ‘borrowed’ a substitute to get back here. If Garp asks, I have no idea where it came from.”

It’s a feat for her mind to catch up — to accept this truth now, even as it’s resisted the alternative for so long. And she’s imagined this scenario so many times, just to keep herself going, and she’d always expected there would be tears, and plenty of them.

The anger is a surprise.

She hits him — the flat of her palm against his chest, no real strength behind it, because she barely has anything left of that, but the sentiment is clear, and Shanks doesn’t stop her. Once, twice, three times. Four, her fingers curling loosely into her palms, fists small and shaking, and with the fifth her sob breaks her in half.

His arm wraps around her back, and her next sob is muffled against his chest, the rest of him curved around her, his large frame a stronger cage for her breaking heart and his nose pressed into her hair, the crook of her neck. And she doesn’t know if it’s still anger or relief that has her hands gripping the cloak at his back so fiercely she feels like she might rip the fabric.

The sketch if his fingers runs a reverent path along the curve of her neck, before his hand flattens against her back, warm even through the fabric of the shirt. The summer night has left a sheen of sweat, small pearls curling the hair at her temples and making the shirt cling, to her bones, her skin, and she feels him seeking both now, sea-roughened fingers tracing the ridge of her spine where it bends, so long on the point of breaking Makino thinks it might have been a relief to let it.

“So this is where my favourite shirt went,” comes the remark then, a honey-warm rumble against her ear, and her laugh chokes on a sob. “I was wondering where I’d misplaced it, but it looks like I’ve found the culprit.” A beat, and then, “I should probably apologise to Ben.”

“Favourite,” Makino says, voice thick. It doesn’t manage to sound even remotely chiding, but she tries anyway. “You have at least fifty just like it.”

She can’t see his smile, but feels it in the kiss laid against her throat. “Maybe,” Shanks says. His hand moves down her spine again, following the curve of her back, before settling on her bare hip. It’s shaking, and the action does little to hide it. “But this one has you in it.”

Brow pressed to his sternum, she doesn’t know if it’s a laugh or a sob that escapes her this time, can’t tell them apart anymore, but her anger has bled away, her last remaining strength gone with it, and it’s a surrender that she hasn’t allowed herself, all these weeks of waiting and no-longer-waiting, but when she finally does, Shanks only tightens his grip. As though she’s the one injured, broken body barely held together, but not with stitches and bandages.

“Is it over?” she asks, on the heels of a laden pause, his shaking hand on her hip. And she almost doesn’t dare hope, but it slips into her voice anyway — shoves itself to the surface now, gasping for air. It feels like she’s been holding her breath for weeks.

Nose tucked under her ear, “My part is,” Shanks says, and the breath that rushes out of her has no care for pretence, or dignity.

Bolder now, “Does that mean you’re home to stay?” Makino asks. And she dares to hope now — dares her hope to be anything but that, hands fisting in his cloak, as though daring him to offer anything but agreement.

She feels his smile — the scrape of his beard softened by another kiss, lingering at the corner of her jaw. “If you’ll still have me,” he tells her. And because it’s him, “After this, I wouldn’t blame you if you sent me packing,” he adds, a wry quip that’s a little too earnest to be convincing. “Not only do I not call in advance, but I come home in the middle of the night. Ben warned me, you know — said you’d punch me for it. He’ll be collecting his winnings in the morning, as usual. And I haven’t even shaved. Pulled something in my arm, so I haven’t trusted myself with a razor. Yasopp offered to help, but I was afraid he’d make good on that promise of taking the whole thing, and I didn’t know how you’d react to that. I know you like the beard.”

He’s running at the mouth, not even a pause for breath between the words, half-laughing, half-rueful, and she lets him — lets him fill the quiet to the brim, until it runs over, and she’s smiling through her tears, so hard her cheeks hurt.

There’s a pause, heavy in the wake of all his talking, and, “So?” comes the question then, softer than his humour. His turn to beg at hope now, although Makino doubts there’s any need for it, with how hard she’s clinging to him.

But, “Stay,” she says, simply. And she’s never asked it of him — and it’s not even a question now, although she didn’t mean for it to be that.

“The beard can stay, too,” she adds softly, and feels more than hears the laugh that pulls from him, his whole body yielding it for her to bear, but she doesn’t break this time, even from the relief.

She thinks she wants to kiss him senseless — that she wants to do a whole number of things, until they both are, almost beside herself with the thought now, one type of longing giving way to another, but no less potent. And she couldn’t have cared less about the fact that there are more bandages than bare skin under her hands. She doubts he’d be hard to ask; imagines he already has a cheeky quip ready, to parry the suggestion.

And she would have been selfish once, when it had been just her. But it hasn’t been, not for some time, and so she tugs at his hand instead, sliding off the mattress, never fully extracting herself from his embrace, fingers winding through his, a lover’s knot wrapped tight. Seeking his eyes, she finds a question in his gaze, but he doesn’t ask it, only rises to follow her lead.

The nursery is quiet, and they could have waited until morning, Makino knows, like she knows they’ll probably live to regret it, knowing full well how difficult it is to get their son to go back to sleep once he’s woken, no matter how late the hour.

But then those dark eyes are blinking awake, taking in the sight of them both, and — “Da?” the small voice asks, little more than a tremble in the quiet, before a smile breaks through the dark with a delighted, ear-splitting  _shriek_ , banishing it and the quiet both, even drowning out Shanks’ laughter. And it’s not regret she feels, watching those little hands reaching, entirely unmindful of the bandages and whatever else he’s brought home with him — has brought _home_ , and to four walls that have for so long felt like something else entirely.

 


	3. new spring

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I expanded this fic a bit. Rating upped for reunion hanky-panky, but it's a minor part, if you want to skip it!

“She’ll be angry.”

The calm statement stirs the quiet without breaking it, although the note of accusation doesn’t go unnoticed. Then again, Ben’s particular brand of disapproval isn’t easily ignored, even with nearly twenty years of practice.

Of course, that’s never stopped Shanks from trying, dredging up a disarming laugh that sounds too derisive to be convincingly unruffled. “I’m not taking that bet.”

“You shouldn’t,” Ben says, without even a pause for breath. The cigarette tucked between his fingers yields a silver curl of smoke. “You’ll deserve it, if she is.”

“No arguments there.”

“She might hit you.”

That earns him a look. “She’s not one for violence,” Shanks reminds him. He knows, and better than most — those hands, that heart; all of her, unfailingly kind.

“Pushed far enough, she might be,” Ben offers back smoothly. A heavy, condemning beat, and then, “I told you not to leave it with her.”

It’s the first time he’s brought it up since he did, months ago, even if it’s been sitting in the air for some time, festering throughout the slow crawl of their voyage out of the New World.

“I wasn’t planning on dying,” Shanks says at length, and tries not to think about the vivre card he’d tucked into her palm when he’d left her. He doesn’t have to wonder what became of it — Ben’s account of what had happened to his own had painted a vivid enough picture. But then, they’d told him he’d been dead, for a good minute.

“You always knew it was a possibility,” Ben reproves. A little redundant, maybe, bringing it up now, and Ben isn’t usually one for letting him suffer for poorly-made decisions, at least so long that the only one affected is Shanks, and not the rest of the crew.

Of course, this decision had affected someone, and so maybe Ben’s persisting disapproval isn’t so strange.

“She said she liked the assurance it brought,” Shanks says, although the excuse rings hollow even in his own ears. “And have you ever tried saying no to those eyes?”

Ben’s silence speaks for itself, but there’s little of the satisfaction Shanks might have derived from it, had the situation been different.

Suddenly eager to change the subject, he roots around for something else — anything but the thoughts that have been on his mind for weeks now; the ones that come to him in the shape of her expression when they’d parted ways, worry weighing on her brow and her arms wrapped safely around their son, fingers closed around his vivre card, as whole as he’d been at the time.

Now, though — “Speaking of close encounters with death,” Shanks says, flicking his eyes sideways.

“Something of an understatement, in your case,” Ben gets in, before he has the chance to continue.

“Although it pains me to say it, we’re not talking about me right now,” Shanks retorts, and receives an arched brow in return. His glibness doesn’t earn him any points, but it’s more than Ben has let him get away with in over a week, so he considers it a small victory. “I’m surprised Doc let you out of bed in your state.”

The silence that greets that statement implies Doc’s advice has been considered — and disregarded. A glance at Ben’s arm, still in its sling — then at the cigarette perched between his lips, “Also, how did you light that, with only one working arm?” Shanks asks.

Ben’s expression doesn’t budge, and, “Sheer obstinacy,” comes the breezy answer. Then, dryly, “I’ve learned from the best.”

“Compliments now, Ben? I don’t know whether to preen or to ask Doc to check your head. Are you sure it was your arm that took the most damage?”

Grin curving around the cigarette, Ben’s good hand lifts in a vulgar gesture, and Shanks finds a laugh that almost manages to feel like his own.

And it’s not forgiveness, not yet, but it’s a concession, and one that helps settle his unease somewhat.

 _Small victories_ , he thinks, but the thought has a sour aftertaste.

Beyond the bow, the East Blue lies sleeping; a clear, black mirror casting an infinite reflection, broken only by the shadow of Dawn Island, drawing nearer. And even asleep, he knows this sea — knows its temper, its quiet heart, but the unfamiliar ship sits on the water differently, and he feels the loss in his body; feels wrongness in every creaking plank that shouldn’t, and those that should but don’t. The empty space where the figurehead should be keeps drawing his eyes whenever he looks away, a ghost in its own right.

Shanks fixes his gaze on the island instead, and has to shove down the restlessness that itches, seeming to push up under his skin. It’s kin to the one he usually feels, coming home, when the prospect of seeing her makes the ship feel suddenly small, and the sea too big.

Strange, both of those feelings, when it’s been the opposite for as long as he’s known the sea — the vastness never big enough, and his ship the only solid foothold he’s ever needed. But then, it’s been a long time since he stopped questioning the change.

Still, there’s something different about that restlessness now, watching the island, and the little port that holds his heart. Because it’s not just a different ship coming home, it’s an altogether different homecoming.

And it’s not the longest they’ve been apart, not even close, but it’s been weeks of his life spent on the brink of death — weeks with a ship beyond salvaging, and a broken crew putting itself back together, piece by piece; wounds healing and bones mending.

He has a vessel now, although it’s not his own — but the crew in it is, and Shanks has always been one for counting his winnings over his losses. And the fact that he gets to go home, _alive_ , is a victory that allows no room for loss.

Of course, certain things could have been handled better. “Should have checked to see if there was a Den Den Mushi on board before we set out,” Shanks says, after a lull.

Ben hasn’t taken his eyes off the island. “Would you have called her, if there had been?”

The tone of his voice alone says what he suspects the answer will be, even before Shanks admits, “I don’t know.”

It’s not a comfortable truth, and it’s one he’s been struggling with. Usually he’d take pleasure in catching her off guard — of coming home unannounced, and of finding her delight greeting him at the docks, so easily prompted, and impossible for her to temper.

Shanks doubts delight is what’s awaiting him now.

And yet, calling her, even if he’d had the opportunity to do so — if they’d stopped on the way over, to find a snail — had seemed beyond him, a new fear having come to fester along with his wounds, that she might not forgive him this time. That she might have finally reached the limit of her endless patience, and thought, determined, _enough. Enough, Shanks. A heart can only take so much._

He can imagine her response without trouble — the inflection, and even her expression. But for all that he’s never had trouble finding the right words (on the contrary, she’d accuse him of rehearsing his responses beforehand, for how quick they come to him), he has no idea how to broach this. _I’m sorry for dying, but I’m all better now. Please forgive me?_

He doesn’t wonder why he doesn’t feel like smiling.

Drawing into port, nothing stirs but the water as the anchor drops, a shiver in the surface. And it’s unlike any homecoming they’ve had, the hush draped over the village drumming a sense of _wrongness_ into his bones, like a pulse in tune with the dull ghost of pain across his chest, reasserting itself with every breath, each coming a little harder, as they make to disembark.

It’s late, in every sense of the word —  _he’s_ late, and it’s a long-running joke between them, but it doesn’t feel funny now, the too-quiet village crawling up from the port seeming to sit in silent judgement. And they could have waited until morning instead of stealing in like thieves in the night, but he hadn’t wanted to wait even an hour longer, and no one had questioned the order when he’d made it.

It’s a warm night, the temperature near-sweltering, and his shirt clings to his back as he steps off the gangway, off the docks. He doesn’t look back, but doesn’t question that the need for privacy is perceived and ensured. The others will wait until morning, but Shanks is done with waiting, even for dawn.

No one crosses his path as he makes his way into the village, the pressing silence a heavier weight across his back than even his cloak — and worse yet, the concern for what awaits him, made bearable only by the delirious lightness left by the thought of finally seeing her.

The soft whine of the bat-wing doors lingers on the air when he pushes through them, the sound seeming uncomfortably loud in the quiet, and he wonders idly if he’s woken her. But when he listens there’s nothing, and when he seeks her presence he finds it still, quiet; and it’s a different quiet than the one he knows to be hers — a little harder, and a little less open to seeking touches.

The bar looks the same as when he’d left it last, and there are signs of Makino's closing routines — chairs on the tables, the floors beneath pristine and uncluttered, and the bottles behind the counter carefully stacked, no glasses left in the sink. Nothing amiss, but he _feels_ it  — the difference, like a piece has gone missing, but it’s nothing he can see; not a table or chair out of place.

Behind the counter sits that old bottle of scotch, pushed all the way to the left, where it always is. The one she only serves when he’s home.

She won’t have touched it, Shanks knows. It will be the only bottle on the shelf with a layer of dust on it.

He’s making for the stairs before it’s had the chance to hold his attention any longer, the steps creaking gently under his weight, marking his passage. And there’s a part of him that hopes he’s woken her now — that she’ll reach him before he’s even cleared the landing. But then he does, and still there’s nothing, and the lightness in his chest grows heavy as he turns down the corridor he could walk in his sleep.

He stops between the doors, hesitating — the nursery to his left, their bedroom to his right. But he’s made his decision with his next breath, knowing which heart has endured his absence the longest, and that will have suffered it the hardest.

The door sits ajar, and pushing through it, he finds her asleep — curled on her side, her knees drawn up to her chest, perched almost at the very edge of the mattress, as though the intent was to claim as little of the bed as possible. And there’s a moment where he doesn’t know what to do, indecision holding him back even with her within reach, and it’s so far from what he’s used to, confidence as steady as his sea legs, and decisions made without delay. He’s always trusted his gut.

But of course, it’s never been about his gut with her.

The quiet remains, untouched, and her breaths are too soft for him to pick out — too soft for her to be properly, soundly asleep, and he doesn’t make a point of being quiet, stepping up to the bed. But Makino doesn’t even twitch, and gives no indication that she’s even heard him enter.

He’s reaching to touch her before he’s even had the chance to think, drawn by the familiar curve of her cheekbone, and the stubborn press of her mouth. The shadows tucked beneath her lashes make something constrict in his chest, but he feels her stirring — the slight hitch to her breathing betrays her, but she doesn’t open her eyes, only turns her head away. A small defiance that would have tempted a smile, if it hadn’t been for the fact that he suspects now, the reason for her reaction.

Taking a seat on the edge of the mattress, he threads his fingers through her hair, spilling dark and loose over the pillow. It’s coarse, as though she hasn’t been taking care of it — a small detail that says more than the sleepless shadows on her cheeks, remembering her endearingly stubborn routines. One hundred brushes every night, no more or less—

 _I can help with that_ , he’d quipped once, but she’d batted his hand away, laughing, and told him pertly she knew exactly what kind of ‘help’ he had in mind, and that it would have to wait until she was done; she had at least fifty more to go. Of course, he’d won her over about ten brushes later.

He doesn’t know the right thing to say now — hasn’t known for weeks where to even begin, but touching her settles something within him; anchors the part of him that’s felt adrift, and the words come to him without conscious thought.

“I thought this was my side of the bed,” Shanks says, palming her hair between his fingers, like a pickpocket stealing a touch for keeping, tone half-teasing, but it doesn’t fully succeed at masking the regret underlying the words.

He feels her come awake — first slowly, her brow furrowing, but then her eyes have shot open, and she’s bolted upright, so hard and so fast she collides with his chest, and his hand flies to her shoulder to keep her from toppling off the mattress.

Her eyes find him — seems for a moment to see right through him, before they’ve focused on his, dark and infinite like the mirror of the sea beyond the port.

And even in the soft shadows, he can pick out her features easily, and the rapid shift of emotions across her face. First incomprehension, but when the blink of her eyes doesn’t find him disappearing, it’s shifted — bleeding into heartbreak, into hope, and looking at her, he doesn’t know which strikes him the hardest, but it drags a smile to his face; a small, marvelling thing, because so many years between them and she’s still so easy for him to read.

The smile does it, and then he sees realisation, clawing to the surface without kindness, and the sound that falls from her with a sob holds his name in it.

Then she’s in his arms — well, the one he has, but it’s all he’s ever needed, and he stops thinking about what to say or how to say it. And she’s _angry_ , although that’s no surprise, even without Ben’s warnings, and even her anger is kinder than what he deserves, but he takes it, anyway — takes all of her, small fists and hard, racking sobs, and the laughter that comes in spite of them both.

And —  _stay_ , Makino says, despite the fact that she’s well within her rights to demand he do the opposite.

He doesn’t have to think about the answer, even if she doesn’t technically ask. And he doesn’t have anything but himself to offer, although that hasn’t changed, even if the circumstances surrounding his return are different.

But he can give her more than just pieces of himself, this time. He can give her more than just a few weeks at a time, and promises weighed heavy with an uncertain future. It’s more than an old, worn shirt, and a sheaf of paper that had brought her anything but assurances, in the end.

And even if he’s a little broken, a few pieces short of a whole, there’s no hesitation in her touch, interlacing their fingers; the arch of her wrist tucked into the heart of his palm, leaving no air. As though she’s found the missing parts of him, has seen and catalogued them all, and decided to fit herself into the remaining spaces, whatever it takes.

 

—

 

“He’s grown.”

The words come to him long after the realisation, and after he’s had time to consider the changes in their entirety; his hair a little longer, and the bridge of his nose touched with freckles, visible even through the dark. Not much bigger, but growth isn’t always found in size and shape; instead Shanks finds it in the quality of that little voice, tongue shaping around new words with ease, and _da_ , his son says, decisive. Matter-of-fact.

Cheek pressed to the crown of his head, the little body tucked against his chest is a comfortable weight, even with the bandages, and the dull ache sitting beneath. And there’s no hesitation in the arms that have circled his neck in an unyielding grip. His mother’s son in so many ways, but in that perhaps most of all — that stubborn, forgiving heart.

“He has,” Makino agrees. Having pushed Shanks into the armchair, she’s leaning on the crib, eyes heavy and dark where they weigh on him, but not with reproach.

Then, something in her expression softening, “Time moves fast here, too,” she adds, as though having plucked the words from his mind. “It’s not just you, Shanks.”

He thinks he might have felt relieved to hear it, but there’s more to it than just the months that have passed him by in his absence. It’s the months he might have missed — a whole life that had nearly slipped from his fingers along with his own.

He doesn’t tell her, but from the look on her face, Shanks suspects she already knows.

She looks tired, he thinks then, watching her, and the thought brings guilt with it. His old shirt hangs loosely off her frame, the sleeves rolled up to her elbows, only half of it buttoned. White as her skin, bared and bathed in shadows, she’s a vision of sharp contrasts; eyes dark and hooded under the fall of her hair, her lashes bruising her cheeks.

And she looks thin — looks drawn, the too-sharp jut of her collarbones visible through the shirt’s open neck, and something clenches in his gut. No less lovely than she’s ever been, but he sees then, the veil of relief and longing lifting, the toll the past few weeks have taken. Like the sea takes from sun-starved sailors left adrift, and it had been a mistake to imagine that it couldn’t touch her, on her quiet island. That his actions wouldn’t affect her.

 _Stupid_ , he knows now, to think that she wouldn’t be the one affected the most.

“What’s wrong?” Makino asks then, stepping closer, and he realises he must have let some of his thoughts slip through, to show on his face.

He doesn’t succeed in easing his features into a smile, but it’s the closest thing to one he can manage, although it doesn’t lift the frown from her face.

“You’re tired,” Shanks says, finding the shadows under her eyes deeper up close, smudging her skin. “You can go back to bed, if you want. I’ll come join you later.”

The look she gives him is patient, and he sees her refusal even before she gives it. “No.” And if he’d had a protest to offer it’s forgotten, the tender insistence in her voice compelling it to yield, “I don’t want to go anywhere.”

“You sure?”

She looks at him — sees, in that uncanny way she’s always had.

“I lost you,” Makino says then, softly.

It’s a statement contested by the very fact that he’s there, but it doesn’t make it any less true, and, “I know,” he says simply.

And it’s not a condemnation, but he begs forgiveness anyway, the only way he knows how.

The invitation is wordless, but when he shifts his grip on their son to make room for her, she comes, bare feet silent on the floorboards, each step holding a mother’s small knowledge of which planks will answer with silence, and which will not. She knows this room better than he does.

She settles in his lap, arranging her limbs with care, knees drawn up and her head tucked against his shoulder. He has no arm to wrap around her, but she makes do, as she always does — makes the best of the situation, efficient and practical in all things.

A small noise of delight escapes into the quiet, along with a very soft _mama_ , before one of those small hands leaves his shirt to reach for her hair, and when Shanks yields his grip she’s already reaching to take him, tucking him between them.

“Is this too much?” he hears then, and feels her shifting, her movements a little awkward, ever-mindful of the bandages, and the stitches underneath.

In answer, he reaches up, his hand now free to wrap around her thigh, keeping her in place. Her skin is cool under his palm, and he feels her shiver. Smile pressed to her hair, “Just the right amount.”

He catches her own — or, the quick shadow of one. “I don’t know if I should believe you,” Makino says. “Moderation has never been your strong suit.”

His grin comes so fast it startles a chuckle into the quiet, and his aches are forgotten under the warm pressure of her body curled in lap, and the smaller weight caged between them. “Maybe not,” he concedes. “But then I’ve always been at an unfair disadvantage when it comes to you.”

Her cheek pressed to his shoulder, he can imagine her expression, even if he can’t see it — pleased despite herself. “I’ll remind you that you said that, when you regret this tomorrow.”

“I’ll live,” Shanks says, a truth that’s more than just a quick retort, although it feels _good_ , finding his way back — to her, and to how they’d been; their quick repartee. Or maybe it’s to who they are now — a little bruised, a little broken, heart and body — that they need to find their way.

Makino is quiet, but it’s not a quiet that rejects, and Shanks takes some heart in that. Some readjustment is to be expected, but they’ve always been good at that; a prerequisite in a marriage mostly spent apart, and separated by a sea that gives and takes in equal measure; days apart, and days together. His arm. Their son.

“We won’t be getting him back to sleep at this rate,” Makino says then, sigh softened with fondness as she smooths a lock of hair away from that small brow. It’s red, the colour seeming to defy even the dark, bleeding between her fingers. For a moment, it holds his whole attention.

“Would you sing?” comes the question then, from just below his chin. “That always does the trick.”

Shanks could tell her that their son is already half-asleep — could ask her, teasing, just who she’s requesting it for. And had his return been a different one, he might have. If they’d been seated downstairs instead, a few glasses into that old bottle on her shelf, he might have teased (and sung, although it would have been an entirely different kind of performance, with her alone for an audience, and his laughter for refrains), but it’s not a night for drinking, or for teasing.

And so — “Yeah,” he says, simply.

He’s always had a voice for singing. His mother was the first to tell him, fondly; his old captain the second, with delight and laughter. And there have been numerous after them both, compliments of all sorts, honest and sultry, but Makino’s is the one he remembers best — no words offered at all, just an expression of utter wonderment that remains one of the clearest memories he has of her.

And he’s never been shy about it, although it’s a talent usually accompanied by a few too many drinks — like it had been that day, so many years ago, back when they’d been little more than strangers and she’d blushed at every glance, and every stolen touch.

There’d been singing — an off-tune chorus at first, trying in vain to salvage the tune from the butcher’s block. And he’d joined in on a whim, picking it up, the words familiar and the rhythm in his bones, and the startled surprise on her face had been such that he’d forgotten about not taking it seriously, holding her gaze instead, first through one verse, then another, followed by a refrain that sought the accompaniment of other voices, although the look on her face had suggested she was only hearing one.

And beyond his usual love of attention, he’d never given much thought to the talent before her reaction, so earnestly given, and —  _you can sing_ , she’d blurted later, and he’d laughed, and wondered at that strange pleasure, pushing up his chest with the beginnings of a completely new verse, like he’d wanted to do an encore, just to hear her say it again.

It’s the little things that come back to him now; the memory of her surprise that day — and his son, no more than a week old and asleep on his chest, after hours of trying without success, and to the _lewdest_ sea shanty in Shanks’ whole repertoire, of all things. He’d been so tired he’d laughed himself to tears.

It’s not the one he chooses now — not with a small tongue that’s started to pick up on words and sounds, to shape them for his own. No, this song is old — older than Shanks, and older than the man who’d taught it to him, and the swell and ebb of the low-toned melody might be better suited rocking waves, not solid ground; a better fit for the rhythm of a hundred feet drumming across the deck, made to be accompanied by ocean spray and the sigh of the wind against welcoming sails, like great lungs expanding, to hold the tune.

But his life is two worlds, land and sea bleeding together, blurring the edges, and the old shanty doesn’t seem at odds here, the room quiet and night crawling through the half-open window, the air warm and thick with salt.

Slowly, the little shape between them settles, small breaths evening out, coaxed by the words pressed to the crown of his head, the repetition invoking those rocking waves; the steady haul of ship’s rope, of anchor and sails. A world their son knows as his own, if only through the songs that have seen him through the first year of his life.

When the last refrain eases into a murmur, Ace is fast asleep — and Makino, her weight a little heavier without her conscious effort to mind his injuries, but it’s a small burden to bear. And if he’d closed his eyes Shanks might have followed suit, but however bearable in the moment, the persistent ache is a reminder that his body will have little sympathy to offer, come morning.

Considering the two shapes asleep against his chest, there’s a moment where regret finds him. It’s not an often-visited thing, because he doesn’t have a heart made to carry regrets with ease, but he feels it now, for the things he can’t do — like carrying his sleeping wife to bed.

Nose pressed to her hair, in tangles around her shoulders, and caught between those small fingers, “Hey,” Shanks says, feeling her start awake, and—

“Oh—” Makino croaks, touching her fingers to her eyes, blinking into the dark. “I fell asleep.”

His heart constricts at the genuine surprise in her voice, and he swallows the question on his tongue, already anticipating the answer — having already found it on her face earlier, bruise-like shadows and deep-sunken eyes.

And if his own small aches hadn’t already made the decision for him, that does it.

Smile crooking ruefully, “I just spent a week in a really uncomfortable bunk,” he says then, when she looks at him. “And even if this alternative is much nicer than having Doc looming over me being the first sight I wake up to, I doubt my back would appreciate it any more in the morning.”

He hears how her breath rushes out, a laugh too soft to even be called that. But then she’s shifting in her seat, movements deliberate as she slips from his lap with a careful, tired grace, her warmth leaving him, and it’s a little ridiculous, the knee-jerk reaction he feels, to pull her back.

Slender fingers coaxing her hair loose from its trap, when he lifts his arm her hands are ready to extract their son, the exchange entirely silent. His head lolls against her shoulder, and Shanks watches her movements — finds in them the months that have passed in his absence, and the numerous nights of repeating the same motions; the tender care taken so as not to jar him awake, and the parting brush of her thumb over a small cheek, before she pulls away.

He feels then, just how long he’s been gone; feels just how much he’s missed her.

He’s risen from his seat by the time she’s done putting him to bed, fingers reaching for the curve of her hip, to slip under the hem of the shirt. A silent question asked with touches, across her stomach, the cage of her ribs, and her laughter catches, that still-soft thing.

Seeking fingers finding the rise of her breast, he feels how her chest heaves, and when she looks at him next it’s not exhaustion that shadows her eyes, turning them hooded.

Catching his elbow, her own fingers trace the river-map of veins in his forearm, and then she’s tugging at his hand, pulling him with her.

The dark still has a few hours left before lifting, but sleep seems suddenly unimportant, even if he hasn’t slept in two days, and poorly the whole week preceding it. Even if he’d spent the weeks before that dragging himself back from the brink of death, and exhaustion has followed him like a ghost ever since, he can’t find a shred of it within himself now, watching Makino, feet bare and that old shirt clinging where his fingers itch to be.

He’s caught her before she’s stepped fully through the doorway to their bedroom, his hand slipped from her grip, thieving fingers stealing the warmth of her skin, to tug her back against his chest.

“We’re barely over the threshold,” Makino laughs, but the tell-tale hitch that accompanies it makes him forget about the dull ache in his chest where her back is pressed against it.

His hand trails the crest of her hip before curving inwards, over her hipbone, a grin kissed along the back of her neck where the shirt has slipped down her shoulder. “You’re usually the efficient one,” Shanks agrees. “Maybe it’s my turn.”

The bed sits, invitingly bare, but even with need knotting itself together in what feels like every muscle in his body, the trace of his fingers up the inside of her thigh is deceptively lazy.

Her smaller frame tucked against the curve of his, the spread of his fingers has her sinking back against him, a surrender in the slow arch of her back, but there’s concern in her voice when she asks, head tilted to seek his eyes, “Are you sure you’re well enough for this?”

“I’ll live,” he says, and wonders if she hears it as more than just a cheeky retort, this time — wonders if she hears the promise that he’d clung to with the last of his strength, through the long days of recovery where he hadn’t known if he would.

He knows she does a moment later, her palm covering his knuckles where he’s placed his hand, just at the apex of her thighs, and his smile curves at the twitch of her fingers — the indecision that makes him wonder if she isn’t about to push his hand closer rather than tug it away. “Shanks—”

“ _Makino_. With what I’ve been through, I really don’t think this will be what kills me,” he tells her, laughing, teeth nipping a kiss along the column of her neck, and when he curves his fingers he feels her own tighten over his knuckles, following when he moves his hand. “Of course, we could try,” he quips, with a chuckle. “I wager it would be a good way to go.”

It’s a risk, that joke, and she’s familiar with his brand of inappropriate humour, but he knows this might inch too close to insensitive, given the circumstances of his return. But he _needs_ to hear her laughing  — is desperate for it, saltwater-parched, and when she does it feels like relief, like breathing again, even as the murmur slips through her laughter, “Shouldn’t you be taking it easy?”

His mouth against her collar marks it with a hot kiss, and a musing rumble that has her breath stuttering tellingly, “I can do that, too.”

He feels the hesitant twitch of her fingers, and he’s tempted to replace his own hand with the one gripping it, but the need to touch her outweighs the playful impulse.

And it’s a need that grows, and builds, until his exhaustion really has no legs left to stand on, and Makino’s are threatening to follow suit. His hurts feel suddenly insignificant, dulled by bare skin and her soft warmth — forgotten entirely with the small noises drawn with the slow circle of his thumb, coaxed from deep in her chest; a soft whine that’s more breath than sound.

And there’s only one ache now, although it’s not much kinder, after months without her, leaving him light-headed from the strain, and the not-having-her — a feeling fast approaching unbearable, when she sinks onto his hand, her head dropping back against his chest.

The shirt stays, rucked up her hips, no hindrance to contend with more than pushing it out of the way, and her laughter finds him before her pleasure does — and her teasing reproval before she’s tugging him to the bed (“you can call the shots, but I’ll at least decide the _location_ ”, spoken with that no-nonsense way that’s hers; that same, impatient huff to her voice that had once seen him dawdling in her doorway, and that has him grinning so hard he forgets, for a moment, the wide sea of years between then and now, finding her at the heart of both).

It’s like coming home, as he takes her, and she takes him in — that enveloping warmth, velvet-soft around his fingers, around him, but the hands fisting in the sheets are harder, her knuckles white and her back arched, bowstring tight.

A kiss against the small of her back loosens some of the tension in her spine, and his smile ghosts across her skin, another kiss finding her shoulder blade, and her breath shudders out with his name, muffled by the sheets.

And it’s a familiar rhythm, no verse and no melody needed — the first tries faltering but earnest, lingering hurts ceding quickly to pleasure, to ecstasy, and she’s warm against him and warm around him but it’s anything but a fever, having her.

She feels like coming home.

 

—

 

Morning finds him first — stirs him into waking by degrees, and without touching the shape under his arm.

It’s a little disorienting at first, like the aftermath of a night of drinking, but without the blinding hangover. Instead there’s a soft mattress, and nothing sways; the room stands still, the house as solid and unwavering as the island it’s built on.

And it’s been a long time since he’s woken like this — and as the first, Makino up with the sun every morning for as long as Shanks has known her.

Now she’s asleep, most of the mattress surrendered to the sprawl of his larger frame, but her limbs loose of the tight, protective coil he’d found her in the night before, her legs tangled with his and her nose buried in his chest.

Some of the bandage has started to come loose (he’d forgone _taking it easy_ the moment she’d kneeled on the mattress and dragged her hair over one shoulder, with a backward glance that had seen him lose all sense of self-restraint, along with the rest of him), and Doc will give him hell for that, but it’s hard to find anything even resembling chagrin, waking to a room he knows, in a bed he knows, and beside his wife’s warm and familiar body.

He allows awareness to find him without hurry until he’s fully awake, and extracts himself with enough care that it twists his features into a grimace, hurts and aches reasserting themselves with less mercy than the too-bright morning. But he’s loath to wake her — is hesitant to even touch her, in case it should be enough to disturb what looks like a much-needed rest.

But she doesn’t wake, even as he eases her back against the mattress, a fleeting kiss feathered to her brow, smooth of worries, and when he moves to search for his clothes Makino remains, curled up in the middle of the bed, bare limbs wrapped in his old shirt and the rumpled sheets.

Shanks considers her, the heavy weight of her lashes against her cheeks, and her parted mouth. It’s not a kind exhaustion, the one that clings to her bones, her too-pale skin, and with less tenderness than the sheets. But grief festers like any other wound, and she’d _grieved_ him. The fact that he’s alive doesn’t change that.

Forfeiting the effort of buttoning his shirt, he spares Makino a last look before making for the stairs, already knowing the nursery will be empty, and who the culprits are; although they’re quieter than usual, which is a small marvel among many this morning.

His suspicions are proven correct a few seconds later, coming to a stop halfway down the staircase and greeted by the sight of a packed common room, the windows thrown open to let in the sunlight — and his crew, every soul accounted for, and busy eating breakfast.

“Morning, Cap,” Yasopp says, lifting his fork in greeting. Ben’s gaze flicks up from the newspaper open on the table between them. Despite the sling around his arm, the toddler in his lap seems entirely at ease with the arrangement, small fingers busy shredding the paper to a cheerful carnage.

“I see you’ve all made yourselves comfortable,” Shanks says, walking down the remaining steps. There’s a good sort of lethargy weighing on his shoulders — the kind that follows the heavy, sated exhaustion of a night spent re-learning the shape of a body he hasn’t touched in months, and a release that seems to have chased a few years from his bones.

Yasopp’s grin is shamelessly knowing, but then Shanks’ general lack of subtlety has invited worse things. “Well, with you commandeering our barmaid, we had no choice but to cook our own bacon. Desperate times and all that.”

“ _Commandeering_ ,” Shanks parrots, feigning affront. But it’s hard to keep his grin from stretching, so he doesn’t bother trying. “She’s not a ship.”

“Roleplay not your thing?” Yasopp asks, innocently. “Could have fooled me. _Captain_.”

Despite his efforts, Ben doesn’t manage to suffocate his own smile in time, and Shanks responds by sticking his tongue out at them both. “Oh, and _our_ barmaid, is it? Last I checked, I was the one wearing the wedding ring.”

That earns him more than a few grins, and, “Don’t be stingy, Boss,” someone else pipes up, to a murmur of assent, a chorus muffled by several mouthfuls.

“Yeah, what would Makino say?”

“Hopefully, she’d remind you all that she only has one husband,” Shanks counters with a look, coming up to the nearest table.

Lifting his eyes from his breakfast, Doc takes one look at him, then at the bandage coming loose under his shirt, but where Shanks expects him to voice his disapproval — “I’ll let it slide. This time,” he says, gruffly. “But at least button your shirt. I’m not your wife — I don’t need to see more of you than I already have.”

“Don’t lie, Doc,” Shanks croons. “I’ve caught you looking. There’s no shame.”

“ _You_ have no shame. Doesn’t mean it’s anything to aspire to,” Ben interjects, without looking up from the newspaper. His godson has yielded his efforts in favour of reaching for Shanks, waving his arms happily, the gesture accompanied with an ear-splitting shriek that has no mind for Ben’s wince.

“You’re chipper, so early in the morning,” Shanks laughs, taking him. “Must come from your mother.”

Ben’s look is one of agreement, but his disapproval from the night before seems to have relented, or at least smoothed into acceptance, although that might have something to do with the bright little laugh that rises above all the other sounds in the room, and the infectious smile that has no care for how long they’ve been gone from his life.

Settling Ace on his arm — something of a feat, given that they’ve only got two functioning arms between them — a small hand reaches for his hair, chubby fingers curled around a fistful with surprising insistence, but he doesn’t pull at it anymore, like he had when Shanks was last home. Now he just holds it; a small, endearingly possessive quirk that feels suddenly significant, with the press of that little cheek to his shoulder.

“Did he give you any trouble?” he asks Ben, shifting his grip. Another small hand comes to grip his shirt, and a pleased, half-coherent babble follows the gesture. Shanks gives him a bounce.

He knows what’s coming even before Ben says, “Less than you usually do. And that’s saying something, seeing as you’re potty trained.” A smirk, and, “Well. For the most part, anyway.”

“ _Ha_. You’re a treat, Ben. How long have you been waiting to use that one?”

“I’m not the one who practices my comebacks beforehand,” Ben shoots back.

“I resent the very _implication_.”

“I could make the accusation more explicit,” Ben says. “Makino usually does. You don’t seem to have a problem with that.”

“Speaking of our girl,” Yasopp says, and Shanks has a mind to call him out on the far too casual use of _our_ again, when he adds, “Did you get started on number two yet? With how you look, it’d have to be that, or she beat the crap out of you last night. Although don’t say we didn’t warn you, coming home like that. But if she didn’t try to strangle you with those bandages, I’m guessing I won’t be amiss placing a bet, say, nine months down the line?”

“You’d be late,” Ben says, eyes on the newspaper again. “That pool’s been filling up for weeks.” A look at Shanks then, and, “Assuming she didn’t send him packing, of course,” he adds, musingly, a single brow raised to emphasise his point. “That pool could still be cashed in.”

Before Shanks can answer — or tell them that he won’t be dignifying their scheming with anything but flipping them off — they’re interrupted.

Footsteps on the porch outside, the planks straining with sudden warning, loud enough that the threat conveys even before the doors are shoved open, revealing Dadan, a considerable force of copper curls and thunderous bluster. She comes to an abrupt stop just beyond the entryway, seeming arrested by the sight of all the pirates in the room.

Brows furrowing sharply, her gaze swivels to Shanks, and by the expression overtaking her features, it’s not beyond imagining that she would have struck him down, if he hadn’t been holding his son.

Then, fury tempered to something that isn’t accompanied by a bare-knuckled fist, although the words strike with about the same force — “Were you at least dead?” she snaps.

The way she says it implies that the answer better be _yes,_ for his own sake.

Shanks doesn’t smile. “Pretty much.”

A noise of gruff affirmation is his answer, before she moves to take a seat beside Ben, as though otherwise unperturbed by their presence, and, “Good,” she says. “Only excuse I’d accept for putting her through that.” A look tossed his way, and then, “That, or serious dismemberment, but you don’t have that many limbs left to lose, so it’s probably for the best that it was the first.”

Ben snorts around a startled smile, and the tension loosens a bit — enough, at least, for Shanks to determine that Dadan doesn’t have the latter in mind for him. At least not for the immediate future.

“She still asleep?” Dadan asks then, with a glance towards the stairs.

Yasopp nudges another chair away from the table, and Shanks takes a seat, shifting the weight on his hip. The little fingers in his hair tighten their grip, a small nose nudged against his throat. “She is.” His next words sit a moment on his tongue before he speaks them, “I take it she hasn’t been.”

The whole room seems to feel the weight of that statement, from the hush that follows — and the understanding that comes to settle in its wake, slinking like a cat between tables and chairs, seats filled now that have been empty for a long time. Not of patrons, because Makino has her regulars, but…

That missing thing is still missing, Shanks finds, frowning.

And it wasn’t a question, but Dadan’s look is answer enough, and between hers and Ben’s, it’s an impressive tableau of disapproval. Shanks considers the wisdom of telling them, when Dadan asks, “Did you wake her before you came downstairs?”

He opens his mouth — then understands what the look on her face means, the one that looks a little too hard to be _worry_ but that doesn’t have any other name. But he isn’t given the chance to answer, or to rectify his mistake, realising too late that he’s made it  — and just what it would mean for Makino to wake to an empty bed.

A _thud_ from upstairs then, drawing the room’s eyes to the ceiling, and regret finds him before the sound of her footsteps across the floorboards, but it’s quickly overtaken by surprise, watching Makino emerging at the top of the stairs at a half-run, nearly missing a step in her hurry, hair in wild disarray about her shoulders, and still wearing nothing but his shirt.

Staggering to a stop at the bottom, she blinks, taking in the crowded bar, every single gaze in the room turned to meet hers, and Shanks watches as realisation washes across her features in the shape of _relief_ , not the mortification he expects, and for a moment she doesn’t seem to have a mind left to spare her own state of undress.

Then — “This brings back memories,” Yasopp chirps, drawing her eyes, and her brows knit together in confusion, before the deliberate shift of his gaze has her own dropping. “Although your taste in nightclothes used to be better, Ma-chan. But I guess this answers my earlier question,” he adds, with a grin thrown in Shanks’ direction.

Her cheeks flush, the wax-pale pallor of her skin suddenly bright with colour, and there’s a second where Shanks thinks she’ll bolt back up the stairs.

But then a laugh falls — a tired, winded thing that sounds more like a sob, but there are no tears accompanying it, just a strange smile that somehow manages to look both relieved and embarrassed at the same time.

Rising from his seat, “Looks like my penchant for blatant indecency came with the shirt,” Shanks says, walking up to where she’s standing, half-dressed in the sunlight. “I usually take pride in being a terrible influence where you’re concerned, but now I’m not so sure.”

Her gaze finds him, and their son on his arm, one small hand extended to reach for her — then sweeps across the room full of grinning pirates, filling her bar to the brim.

Her expression wavers, then breaks. And there are tears trembling at the corners of her eyes now when she says, her laugh a thick, broken sound, “I’m never going to live this down, am I?”

Yasopp’s grin threatens to be the widest of the lot. “Not a chance. But with this, we might finally let you off the hook for that thank-you speech on your wedding day,” he tells her, and when she laughs the tears spill over, bright down her flushed cheeks.

And just like that, the thing that had been missing when he’d walked through the doors the night before finds its way back — fits itself snugly between the rising laughter and the sunlight, right where it should be, if only a little different than what he remembers.

He realises what the change is a moment later, finding Makino’s smile directed at him — finds in her expression not just relief but _belief_ , that they really have come home to stay this time.

And it is a little like their wedding day, he thinks, the collar of his shirt hanging off one shoulder, the fabric clinging with reverence. No flowers in her hair but her laughter spilling out of her instead, half-delirious with something that isn’t _sake_ , her palms pressed to her eyes to hold back tears that won’t stop coming, but her smile too wide to be stifled.

He doesn’t know what to call the once-missing thing — her, or him, or the whole lot of them, every soul under her roof ( _theirs_ , he corrects, but it will take time yet for that to come naturally). But maybe it doesn’t matter which it is, or what it’s called.

Although —  _home_ , he thinks, with a certainty that makes room for itself, and that requires no adjustment, or even a pause for breath.

And then, because it’s him — because he’s alive, and home, and _because he can_ , “So I’m ordered to button my shirt, but she gets to walk around in nothing _but_ a shirt, and not one of you has a single issue with this?”

The innocent expressions ducked into plates and glasses is a cheerful mutiny of preference, but then that’s never been much of a secret, and for all the grief he gives them for it, Shanks doesn’t begrudge them their small claims.

He’s not the only one who’s come home, after all.

 

—

 

However deep the roots, it takes time for a home to grow, and to flourish.

It takes weeks, for his wounds to fully heal — more still, for the scars to surrender their aches, and for the angry colour of still-healing tissue to soften. It takes weeks for Makino to sleep through the night with ease — weeks before she no longer starts awake, hands reaching and his name breaking on her tongue.

But it does heal, and grow — an odd sort of home, built in bits and pieces, and heart-seeds sown in unusual soil; a thriving bed of mountain bandits and farmers and old, retired pirates. Home is the four walls of an old bar, and the tender evenings spent watching his son toddle back and forth between the tables, a dozen hands ever-ready to catch him. It’s summer bleeding into autumn, celebrating a Pirate King newly crowned, and a sea that stretches beyond the port, with a horizon that doesn’t call him anymore.

It’s early mornings coming awake, in a bed where the mattress dips under his weight, and where his wife has slept through the night, stomach growing heavy under an old, favourite shirt.

“How many of your crew have settled here now?” Makino asks him one morning, looking out across the common room, every table filled, despite the early hour. “Is it all of them?”

Shanks takes a moment to consider the question — and the people gathered. “They’ve settled?”

She gives him a patient look for that, amusement winking in her eyes. “They haven’t left.”

“Your point being?”

“It’s been seven months.”

“And? You know the guys — they wouldn’t hurry if the world was ending.”

“Doc set up a clinic. Ben bought a _farm_.”

Shanks snorts. “Ben overestimates his own horticultural skills. What’s he going to grow, tobacco plants?”

“Yasopp was talking about building an extension on the tavern,” she points out. “That’s not a short-term project.”

Shanks considers the room again, and the people in it — finds a well-worn familiarity in the scene, and the laughter, despite the solid floorboards underfoot, and windows instead of portholes.

He thinks of his ship, at the bottom of the sea, and the home he’d carried back with him, in every soul she’d carried on board.

Then, gaze glancing off the stomach rounding under Makino’s palm, “It would give us more space,” he says.

The purse of her mouth holds a knowing smile. “We have plenty of space, even when this one is born,” she tells him, patting her stomach. But with a look at the room at his back, her eyes curving, “But if they’re planning on sticking around, it might not be such a bad idea,” she concedes softly.

Shanks smiles, and when she walks past, catches her hand; a wordless gratitude in the tuck of his fingers around her knuckles, not just for his own sake, but for the crew who’d come home with him.

Then — “Ben better not be expecting me to help him tend his fields,” Shanks tells her, and when she laughs, “I have my own crop to fertilise,” he quips, brows lifting suggestively. And with a meaningful glance at her stomach, “Although I think I’ve done a pretty good job so far.”

Her snort escapes without control or dignity, and then she's laughing so hard she can barely hold her tray upright, and has to sit down halfway across the room — by which time someone steps in to take over, and she’s too busy laughing to protest the small usurping, and to bat their hands away.

It takes time, to come home in truth, and for home to become what it is — to become the family he has, ever-growing; another life quickening under his palm, little kicks meeting his kisses, and more bets than even Ben can keep track of (it’s a girl, it’s another boy, it’s one of each, red hair — no, her mother’s this time, or a little of both? What would that even look like? Dark eyes, though, that’s a given. Freckles, maybe. Makino’s nose, hopefully).

Home is a stack of ledgers, the pages filled with numbers and names. So many uncles, one little heart can’t keep count of them all, but _two —_

Two might manage, between them.

 

—

 

The day his son was born ranks as the single most terrifying day of his life.

The day his daughter is born comes in a close second.

“Shanks.”

The slight tremble in his name should have alerted him to the fact that something is wrong, but sleep’s grip is more persistent than the small hand on his shoulder, and so all he does is draw her closer, nose nudged beneath her ear, and his murmur sleep-roughed. “What?”

The startled hitch of her breath cuts off with a strangled cry, and he’s awake before her fingers have had the chance to tighten on his shoulder.

Her back bends at a sharp angle, and her answer is lost in the sharp hiss sucked through her teeth, but the pain strung through every too-taut line of her body says enough, and he doesn’t ask again before he’s out of bed, running.

It all happens so fast he’s left reeling — Doc unshaved and in his shirtsleeves, dragged out of bed before the sun and without kindness, and Ben, not much better off, although it’s a good deal better than Shanks, who’s pointedly told to sit down, down a shot and shut up.

He feels like complaining, but Ben’s unyielding expression stills the protest on his tongue. He downs the drink instead.

Then Makino screams, the sound carrying, and he’s knocked back a second before it’s stopped ringing in his ears.

He’s had three altogether before another, smaller voice rises with a shrill, keening wail — first filling the cracks in the sudden silence, then the room, then the bar and what feels like his whole body — and he leaves the fourth on the bar, untouched and forgotten.

“All good,” Doc is telling him, before Shanks is even through the door. Sleeves rolled up over his tattoos and his hair loose, he looks like he could use a shave — and a sharp drink, but it’s a far cry from how he had been, the last time they’d been in this situation.

And Shanks doesn’t have to ask just who he’s referring to, because there, brand new and snug in her mother’s arms — “I don’t know if I prefer the express method,” Makino croaks with a laugh, seeking his eyes from across the room. But her own are bright, not glassy and unfocused, and she’s conscious, her hair damp but no blood on the sheets.

Still reeling, Shanks can’t find the voice to offer his agreement.

The whole thing had taken less than an hour from start to finish, barely enough time for them all to wake up, and for the fear to settle back down again. And with his heart still racing, he manages a single kiss to Makino's brow, and a trembling touch to their daughter in her arms before calmly making for the bathroom, to violently empty his stomach of the drinks.

It’s an hour of his life, and at least ten years off his lifespan in one fell swoop, but a single moment and it’s over, a new beginning before he’s had time to catch his breath, and by the time the small wails have receded, their bar is full of visitors (bandits, farmers, former pirates, and those who now answer to all three), all half-asleep in their seats, and Dadan holding court, the little boy on her arm lulled to sleep by her restless but quietly defiant pacing.

The sky opens up, yielding a cold spring shower, and the sun hasn’t even had time to rise before it’s swallowed by the downpour.

Seated on the porch underneath the awning — “I think I’ve aged,” Shanks declares to the rain, when everything has settled but his heart, which aches like an old wound. “Ten years. At the very least.”

Long-suffering expression toeing a familiar border of amusement, the wry, in-spite-of-yourself sort of humour that doesn’t even pretend to be anything else, Ben lifts his gaze from the baby sleeping in Shanks’ arm. “You look it.”

“Don’t be cruel, Ben.”

“Forgive me. I meant that infirmity suits you.”

Shanks sighs. “Death approaches swiftly.”

“Not swiftly enough,” Ben says, under his breath.

“I heard that.”

“Hearing’s still intact then. Although I wager it won’t be long now before that goes, too.”

Too tired for a convincing rebuttal, Shanks ignores him. Beyond the porch, the curtain of rain hangs, gleaming quicksilver in the pale grey light creeping in with the rest of the morning, ushered by a thick cover of mist from the shore.

It’s early, and brutally so, but the rain softens the sharper edges of the morning, and the smell of dark earth and sea and rainwater allows his body to welcome the fact that he’s awake at such an ungodly hour, and with only minimal protests.

The baby in the curve of his arm sleeps, as new as the day. Soft and pink, and just a few hours old, but holding his heart as surely as if she’s had it always.

And she’s _tiny_  — smaller than her brother was, a perfect little face with a pert nose, and rosy lips arched in a cupid’s bow, pursed gently with sleep. Soft, downy hair, immaculately dark and tucked close to her head, dusting the delicate sea-shell’s curve of her ears.

“Can you believe a person could be this small?” Shanks asks, for what is probably the fourth time, given the amused look Ben offers him in return. “And look at how _cute_ she is. I’m never putting her down.” A glance at Ben, and the little boy in lap, head lolling back, half-asleep, “Last time I did that, you never gave my son back, but I know better now. You’re not getting your hands on this one  — not on my watch.”

“We’ll see,” Ben says simply.

Shanks ignores him, attention claimed once again by the baby, that brand-new heart. Her mother’s creature, he sees, those little features too delicate to be his own; the small mouth and the dark lashes.

“Hey, swallow,” he says. No name for her yet, their impatient, too-quick girl, but the endearment comes without thought; a new creation — as new as her, a small bird flitting into their lives without warning, barely giving them a chance to catch her. But it’s fitting, and appropriately sentimental, given his heart — an old sailor’s tale, the swallow; the mark of a successful voyage, and the voyager’s safe return. “How did you get to be so cute, huh? Can’t be my doing.”

“It’s not,” Ben and Makino’s voices say in unison, and they both look up to find her in the doorway, one of the doors swinging softly behind her.

Leaning her weight on the frame, the eyes that find Shanks’ look tired, but her smile is one of familiar amusement, tilting them at the corners. “Well,” Makino says, tone contemplative. “It might be your doing. You have your moments.”

Any other time and he might have taken that comment and run with it, but with the morning’s events still fresh in mind — the result sleeping soundly in the crook of his arm, too small to believe, and too beautiful to bear — any attempt at humour falls short of convincing. He’s so tired he could go to sleep on the spot.

Knowing she must feel the same, he means to ask what she’s doing out of bed, but senses the question will be met with obstinacy — finds the ghost of a young wilfulness in her expression, observing them from the doorway.

But there’s a healthy flush to her cheeks, and her eyes are bright — tired, red-rimmed with exhaustion, but it’s a tiredness that sits with ease, the lines at the corners of her eyes soft and smiling, and no tension in her shoulders, loose under that old, ragged shirt.

Ben is rising from his seat before Shanks can point out either fact, the little boy in his arms now fast asleep. “I’ll go put him down for a nap,” he says. Then with a meaningful glance at Shanks, he’s disappeared inside the bar.

His seat relinquished, Makino moves to claim it, easing into it with a grimace, and the reason for Ben’s departure becomes apparent. And it’s testament to the pain she must still be in, for her not to have picked up on it — or at least, for her not to have offered her misgivings. A truly terrible patient, exceeding even himself, for all that she’s supposed to be the patient one.

A rush of unbearable fondness fills his chest, but familiar exasperation isn’t far behind. “My girl,” he sighs, and the look she shoots him tells him she knows what’s coming already from the inflection, even before he adds, “Wouldn’t you be more comfortable in bed?”

A dark brow quirks, and her smile is small and clever. “Should I be worried that you didn’t even try to make that sound suggestive?” she asks, and his laugh is a startled, helpless thing.

“I’m a little off my game this morning,” he concedes, the reason for which is still asleep, delicate appearance entirely at odds with the upheaval she’s caused, the scant few hours she’s been in the world.

 _You'll be one to look out for_ , he thinks, eyes tracing the lovely dip of her mother’s nose. A now-familiar feeling, bringing no answers, just a curious sense of certainty. He’s hinged his life on that feeling more than once.

“I could make it suggestive, if it would help,” he says then, and finds Makino’s smile reaching all the way to her eyes when he adds, “but I doubt you’d be up for that.”

That makes her laugh, a thick and tired sound. Like the morning, the rain in the air seems to soften her features, the tired shadows not as dark as they’d seemed earlier, on the heels of that brief, terrifying hour that had been no kinder than the twenty it had taken their son to come into the world.

She isn’t budging on the matter, although he’d already expected she wouldn’t, but, “You just gave birth,” Shanks says, as though that will help his case.

Her arched brow tells him plainly it will not. “I know,” she quips, her tone dry and her smile fond. “I was there.”

“I think I would appreciate your glibness more if I didn’t still feel like throwing up.”

“Seems only fair,” Makino retorts, sinking back into the chair a little. “I’ve had two rounds of persisting morning sickness. This should even things out a little.”

“Makino,” Shanks says, and there’s no humour in his voice now.

Her smile softens. “I know,” she says, to something he hasn’t even spoken, but that she’s found anyway. “I’m just trying to lighten the mood. Take a page out of your book.”

“I can think of several people who’d advise against doing that. Not me, of course, but people.”

Her tired laugh eases something in his chest; that old wound of a heart. But, “Sure you wouldn’t rather go back to bed?” Shanks asks, because there’s part of him that needs to. “I meant what I said earlier — I could join you, if that would give you incentive.”

She shakes her head, but her smile stays. “The rain made the room stuffy,” Makino says, dragging her fringe away from her face, the dark strands still a little damp. Her sigh falls, heavy and sated. “This is better.”

“Doc isn’t going to be happy when he sees you walked down the stairs on your own,” Shanks reminds her. She didn’t need stitches this time, but it does little to placate his worries, even with Makino awake, and their new daughter healthy and dozing gently.

Curled up in the chair, she’s tucked her head against the armrest, back bent in an almost protective curve. A little awkward, with a body still adjusting to the sudden change, after nine long months. She’s closed her eyes, her lashes dark against her cheeks, but the healthy colour hasn’t yielded, and she looks at ease, Shanks thinks. Content.

“He went back to sleep,” Makino murmurs. “I’ll be back in bed before he wakes up.”

“He’s not the only one who could use the rest,” Shanks says, and keeps from pointing out that someone will be carrying her back up the stairs whether she likes it or not.

She makes a soft noise — he can’t tell if it’s in agreement or the opposite — but then she’s opening her eyes from where they’ve slipped shut, although it’s only to watch him where he sits; as though taking stock of the things that are hers.

In the tavern at their backs, there are people coming awake, the muted babel of conversation drifting through the doors, into the rain and the open air. Someone laughs, but the sound barely disturbs the peace — only slips into it, an effortless fit.

Makino’s gaze shifts to the baby, expression easing into a smile. “How is she?”

Despite the lingering worry, Shanks finds his own. “Quiet.”

Pleasure brightens her features, but then he thinks she might have looked like that if he’d told her the opposite was the case. “Really?”

“Yeah. Are you sure she’s mine?”

Dark eyes gleaming, the hum that sits on her tongue is thoughtful — teasing. “I don’t know,” she says. “There was a pirate captain who stole into my bedroom in the middle of the night, about nine months back. My memory is a little fussy on the details, but I seem to remember that he was very ravishing. Could be his.”

“I don’t know if I should be pleased that you find me ravishing, or insulted that it wasn’t more memorable. I put a lot of effort into that seduction, mortally wounded as I was.”

“Oh, so it _was_ you?”

He sticks his tongue out, and her smile comes, too quick for her exhaustion to claim it, and when she looks at him her expression holds so much _feeling_ , it makes his next breath hard to catch.

“I wouldn't want her to be anyone else’s,” Makino says, voice gentle but the words firm. Then, softer, "I wouldn't want to be, either."

It’s hard to find anything clever to say, or even the voice to speak it, and so Shanks allows his silence to speak for itself.

The girl in the crook of his arm stirs then, small brow creasing with displeasure, and Makino’s eyes blink open at the little noise that rises into the rain. But she doesn’t cry, although the fussing doesn’t stop, even as he rocks her.

“Would you sing?” Makino asks then, and Shanks looks up to find her watching. The rain still hasn’t relented, the heavy rhythm drumming a steady tune on the roof, seeming to welcome another.

Smile curving, he accepts — picks the most vulgar shanty he knows, for no other reason than to have her smiling, and he hears her tired laugh rising in accompaniment; a refrain of earnest mortification after each verse that leaves a rising blush across her cheeks, the lingering shadows lifting with her widening smile.

Somewhere along the third verse (the raunchy tale of a lusty tavern wench and a captain with more than coins bulging in his trousers), their daughter stops fussing, and by the fourth (recounting a bar-brawl-turned-seduction wherein the tavern wench takes her due payment — and the captain’s coins) it’s just the two of them, Makino’s laughter and that old, lewd song, and the rain offering some censure, for those unfortunate enough to walk by.

And it takes time for a home to grow, but theirs does — grows and thrives, gnarled roots and weeds and small, stubborn sprigs, despite hard seasons and difficult conditions, and saltwater in the soil. It's a strange convergence of worlds and people, and sea songs for a land-bound life, but they don’t speak of longing now — because they’ve both had their share of that, and more besides.

 


	4. four walls

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I got another flower prompt and decided to write it into this storyline. It asked for "kingcup" (youth, innocence, dawn), for my Shanks x Makino family and Garp, and I couldn't resist.

It’s a commonly held belief that retirement brings  _peace_  — the chance to sit back and relax, a legacy sowed and reaped, and little of the sea to contend with other than the occasional tide, and news from abroad.

Of course, sometimes the tide brings more than just news and sea foam.

“Garp called,” Makino announces one morning, before he’s even finished walking down the stairs. “He’s coming for a visit.”

Sleep deprived with a six-day beard and baby sling in place, Shanks just looks at her — notes her cheerful smile and perky, up-with-the-sun-even-with-a-screaming-infant-at-the-breast disposition, and tries to remember the many horrors he’s lived through on the sea that have had worse odds than this. He comes up short.

“Is it too late for me to un-retire and go back to pirating?” he asks, and spares an idle thought to how far he could get by rowboat with one arm. “We could bring the kids.”

Her smile tells him plainly how good his chances are, and so he relents with a sigh he carries with him down the last remaining steps.

The sun having just crept above the treetops, not yet high enough to make it through the bat-wing doors, there isn’t a soul in their bar save the two of them, and the little one sleeping against his chest. Their son has, thankfully, started to keep more regular hours, although Shanks knows it won’t be long until he’ll be up, too. Of course, only three hands between them has never been much of an issue, with a whole village to assist (and it takes one, he’s heard, and has never found it to be more true, with two children under the age of five).

Taking a seat at the bar, he’s careful not to jar the baby, snug in her sling, and spends a quiet minute watching Makino moving about, an impressive performance of multitasking; a tray under one arm and her inventory list tucked between her teeth, and quick hands busy tying her apron around her waist.

And there’s a particular sort of quiet to mornings like this, with just the two of them. The windows thrown open and the sea coming in, along with the first shafts of sunlight, glinting off the bottles on the shelf, greens and golds and browns; a kaleidoscope of coloured glass and liquor from across the blues. It’s peace, the quiet prelude to a busy day, no sea underfoot pitching a creaking deck and no sails spread white against the sky overhead, but it’s not regret he finds in considering it — the clean, sturdy floorboards and the heavy ceiling beams. The silver sea beyond the windows, lit by the sun; no longer steering his course, but always within reach.

It’s probably fitting, Shanks thinks, with wry amusement, lone hand curved around the sleeping baby — that his particular retirement should come with a bar.

“Are you falling asleep in your seat?”

He blinks, and when he lifts his gaze it’s to find his wife grinning at him from across the counter, brown-gold eyes gleaming like one of the bottles on the shelf behind her. “It’s a good thing it’s my turn to do inventory,” Makino muses. “From the look of you, I’m surprised you remembered to put on a shirt when you got out of bed.”

“Hey,” Shanks laughs. Then, looking down at himself, just to check, “No. I did.”

When he looks at her again, her expression has changed, and his cheeky smile eases into something softer at her concern, shown without pretence. She might have been up before him this morning, but he’d spent most of the night trying to sing their screaming daughter to sleep.

“I could take her for a few hours, if you want to get some sleep,” Makino says, stepping out from behind the bar to where he’s sitting. “It’s a little while yet before business picks up. And I could ask Ben for help with Ace, when he stops by.”

Shanks glances at the tray still tucked under her arm and the inventory list in her hand, her apron in place and not a wrinkle in it. Knowing her, it wouldn’t hinder her much to have a baby at the breast; like it had barely slowed her down conducting her business when she was pregnant, maneuvering between her tables with a straining stomach, and no patience for the hands tugging her down into a chair, to take breaks.

That old fondness that’s hers fills his gut, climbs up his stomach to his heart like the spreading warmth of a good drink, and his smile doesn’t feel as tired as he does. “You say that,” Shanks tells her, “but you already know she screams the minute I put her down. I already tried. Three times.”

“She likes it when you carry her,” Makino says, smiling eyes dropping to their daughter, fast asleep now. A deceptive picture of delicate sweetness, for how much noisecan come out of such a tiny creature.

Shanks sighs a laugh, smoothing his hand over the shape of her; the cup of his palm fitting around the curve of her back. Still so small, at three months; her hair still dark, like the eyes behind those tiny, closed lids. She doesn’t stir, seeming wholly content to demonstrate an answer to her mother’s remark. “Yeah,” he says. “Wilful little thing, isn’t she?”

“Says the man she gets it from.”

“I’m sorry,” he laughs, mock-affronted. “The most wilful creature on the five seas said  _what_?”

She flicks his nose for that, but draws her fingers back before he can kiss them, curving them over his cheek, before a tug at his beard follows; a small, favourite gesture that comes without thinking. They have their share of those; their little intimacies, wrought from so much time spent apart, as though they’re always seeking physical assurances now, of each other’s presence.

“You know, this is the most decently dressed I’ve seen you in years,” Makino tells him, smoothing her palm over the sling where it’s wrapped around his shoulder, eyes lingering on the scars climbing over his collar, healed but still slightly pink. He’s flashing a lot less chest than usual, although it’s not for lack of trying, no matter what she says. “Fatherhood has changed you.”

Oh he’ll forgo the shirt entirely next time, just for that comment, and he sees that she’s caught onto his line of thinking by the fond roll she gives of her eyes, although the gleam in them stays, like the hand lingering on his shoulder.

“I see you making bedroom eyes at me, wife, but I’m warning you, the minute my head hits anything even resembling a pillow, I’m going to be snoring on the spot.” He sighs, and with a touch more drama than he really needs, although that’s never stopped him. “It pains me just to say it. You’d have to have your way with me.”

She tries to stifle her smile, but when he angles his head to claim a kiss it fleets, quick across her face into something silly and laughing. Leaning close, she takes care not to wake the baby, palm tucked to his cheek and her returning kiss unbearably soft, and there’s a suggestion on its way off his tongue that maybe a fourth attempt to put their daughter down will do it, and they can get in a quickie in the storeroom before they open, when Makino pulls back.

“If you’re thinking of escaping by rowboat,” she says with a firm kiss to his mouth, “you should start rowing now. Garp will be here in two days.”

Shanks sticks his tongue out. “You joke, but I just might.”

Looking down at their daughter, that little red mouth pursed with the kind of innocence that makes him forgive and forget all the times she’s kept him up with her screaming, “So what about it, swallow? Will it be a pirate’s life for us?” he murmurs. “Even your grandpa would have trouble arresting someone so adorable. It would be the perfect distraction.”

“He’s not going to be arresting anyone,” Makino says. The look she gives him tries to be pointed, but she looks far too amused for it to be even remotely convincing. “You’re family now.”

“God,” Shanks sighs. “Don’t let Garp hear you say that. I’m pretty sure he’s still considering having me tossed in Impel Down for marrying you.”

“Hmm,” she hums, tapping the pencil against her cheek, fingertips worrying one corner of the inventory list, as though in contemplation. “Which level would that kind of crime warrant?”

“Your concern for my wellbeing is touching, dear heart.”

“I’ll write you,” she says, with a pat to his cheek. Then with a last, adoring glance at their daughter, sets off towards the storeroom. “But if you’re really worried, there are lots of dinghies at the docks,” she tosses over her shoulder, and with a laugh that chases after her along with his reaching fingers.

Shaking his head, Shanks looks at the baby and muses, “Maybe when you’re older, huh? You take the oars, I’ll navigate.”

“Better take Ben with you,” Makino calls from within the storeroom. “If I’m to believe what I’ve heard about your navigation skills.”

“Mommy teases, but we won’t be bringing her, will we?” Shanks asks the sleeping baby. “She’d spend the whole voyage throwing up over the side of the boat. Can’t have that if we’re going to claim the sea for ourselves.”

He speaks the words with ease, and there’s little of that old longing he once felt at the thought of setting sail. Instead, the anticipation he feels finds its heart in the little one beating gently against his own, wanting to know what she’ll be like, when she grows up — if she’ll desire the sea, or something else entirely. He wonders if her hair will stay dark, and if she’ll grow up with her feet planted on solid land, or seeking unsteady footing on an ocean that never stops moving.

He considers it for a moment, that new longing; the one that burrowed deep when he wasn’t looking, one sunny afternoon well over a decade ago, stepping through the doors at his back for the very first time and finding a reprimand for dawdling in them too long. He hadn’t left Fuschia the same man who’d stepped onto the docks, a part of him having settled down to stay, years before he finally followed suit.

When he looks up it’s to find Makino in the storeroom doorway, mouth pursed with that knowing smile that has too much patience for his dramatics, and, “No,” Shanks says quietly, looking at her, and their bar. It’s not an island, like he’d promised her once, but it’s theirs, still. This life, this home. “I don’t think I could leave her, for all the sea in the world.”

Dark eyes curving, he finds her laugh-lines, not etched as deep as his, but soft and delicate. Lines from a life spent smiling, and often. “Who knows?” Makino asks. “Maybe I’d endure the seasickness.”

Shanks grins. “Yeah? If we leave now, we’ll be in the next port before Garp gets here. We can even bring Ben.”

She laughs, and turns back to the storeroom. “With how well his new tobacco enterprise is doing, I doubt he’d appreciate being uprooted.”

“You say that like he has a choice in the matter.”

“You say that like  _you_  have,” Makino counters, before slipping smoothly through the doorway.

Shanks shakes his head, but it’s hard to stop smiling, with her laughter filling the quiet, and the little body sleeping against his chest, small breaths and that still-new heart. The sun has started stretching languidly across the floorboards, and it’s not long before there’s an echo of footsteps on their porch, before the first creak of the doors sings through the morning.

But even with their first customers making themselves comfortable, the clink of glasses and plates joining the familiar cacophony, their daughter sleeps on. And home is home, solid and safe; four walls and a roof and the sea beyond the port, and not likely to be shaken by a little familial upheaval.

Even if it  _is_  Garp.

 

—

 

He arrives two days later, as announced. A ship pulls into port while Shanks is reading the morning paper, and word of his arrival reaches them even before the man himself strides inside, the doors swinging wildly and dragging every set of eyes in the room to the doorway.

Coming to a stop, a broad-shouldered mountain of grizzled whiskers and garish floral print that makes even Shanks’ best efforts seem half-hearted, Garp’s gaze seizes upon him, standing behind the bar with the newspaper spread across the countertop — then takes in the apron slung around his hips, and the kitchen towel tossed haphazardly over his shoulder.

Shanks thinks he makes for a damn good-looking barkeep, but he’s not surprised it’s not agreement that he finds on Garp’s face.

“Don’t tell me  _you’re_  running this place now,” Garp says, the remark a muted thunder of derision that flings out like a punch.

Shanks grins, and chirps, “Can I get you a drink, Garp?”

Those hard eyes make a broad sweep of the bar, taking in the fully seated tables with a furrow growing deep between his brows, the frown pulling at the scar on his temple. More than just the regulars he’s used to seeing, going by the telling downturn of his mouth, but before he can comment on the fact there are footsteps on the stairs, and then Makino is there, the baby snuggled in her arms.

“Garp,” she greets warmly, coming to a stop beside Shanks, and the furrow between Garp’s brows smoothens out — disappears, leaving something curiously unreadable. She hasn’t had time to tie her hair up this morning, and it falls loose around her shoulders, a handful claimed by the little girl being gently rocked in her arms. “How was the voyage over?”

Their daughter is awake, and Shanks reaches out to touch a fingertip to her nose, finding her eyes seeking his, wide and dark in her small face. Sticking his tongue out tempts a toothless smile, and his own, an even wider thing. 

Garp’s attention seems to have momentarily been stolen by the baby, but, “Can’t complain,” he says gruffly. Then with another glance at the room, “Your whole damn crew is here,” he says to Shanks. He’s not surprised it comes off sounding like an accusation rather than an observation.

He doubts the fact that they’re all  _grinning_  is helping.

“Crew?” Shanks asks, innocently. His daughter makes a noise, soft and gurgly, stealing his gaze, before he’s lifted it back to the old marine, who seems stubbornly intent on holding onto his glare with his bare hands. “I’m not a pirate anymore, Garp. I don’t have a crew.”

The look he gets for that makes it hard to keep his grin from stretching into something that will no doubt be taken as insufferable cheek, and, “Once a pirate, always a pirate,” Garp drawls, and spares another cutting glance at the people seated around the room. “And what the hell would you call these guys, if they’re not?”

“I’m a humble farmer!” someone calls from across the room, followed by a chorusing assent, although their widening grins render their professed innocence a little redundant.

“We plough, we don’t plunder!”

“No pirates hereabouts, Garp!”

Garp’s expression doesn’t twitch from its wholly deadpan slant, and Shanks doesn’t even bother tempering his grin now. “I don’t know what to tell you, but you’ll have a lot of work on your hands, arresting them all. Although if you do you can start with Ben, for his tobacco prices. They’re criminal.”

“You don’t even smoke,” Ben speaks up from where he’s sitting, reading the newspaper, his godson in his lap. A firm and decisive  _Ben-ben_ rises into the quiet, and Ben pats his head, obediently flipping the page, to the growing elation of the little hands reaching to mimic the gesture, flipping it back. Shanks doubts Ben has gotten past the first article, but there’s little but patient amusement to be found on his face.

Garp snorts, and gives Shanks another once-over. “You take up farming, too?”

“You don’t have to sound so  _dubious._ ”

Garp just looks at him, and Shanks grins, adding, “But since you ask, I haven’t. Barkeeping proved the greater calling, and I thought I’d give my wife a hand. Only one, mind you.” His raised brows earn him a laughing sigh from his wife, and more than one groan from across the room. Someone threatens to toss a fork at his head.

Tossing a vulgar gesture at them all, Shanks looks back at Garp. “But since you obviously don’t think I could, now I’m tempted to reevaluate my new career just to prove you wrong. I have lots of of hidden skills, horticultural and otherwise.”

Slender fingers settling on his shoulder with tender warning, “If you make that crop fertilising joke in front of the man who is essentially my father, you will be changing her diapers alone until she is out of them,” Makino murmurs under her breath, sweet smile in place as she tucks the baby into the crook of his arm, and she’s breezed by him before Shanks can quip that he has an even better joke at hand, about their bountiful harvest so far.

He tucks it under his tongue for later, and turns his gaze back to Garp, wearing an enduring expression that makes Shanks wonder if he wasn’t expecting a joke of the sort, but before he can decide whether or not to risk his life attempting one, Garp’s gaze drops to the baby.

His expression shifts again, into that unreadable thing that beckons some old, long-buried feeling. The occupants in the room are keeping up a convincing show of going about their own business, while shamelessly observing the exchange.

“Emmy,” Shanks says at length, rocking her a little. She makes that small sound he loves; that soft little humming thing that never fails to make him smile like an idiot.

He’s surprised to see Garp’s features slacken, before something like a laugh drags out of him; a sharp gust of breath, sounding almost startled. Then, dryly, “Good thing the old girl’s dead, or she would have pitched a fit hearing that,” he says.

The tightly strung tension loosens like a sigh, and the grins in the room turn back to their plates and glasses.

Shanks smiles. “Makino said something similar.”

“Didn’t stop her,” Garp says, with a snort too soft to be convincingly derisive. “Probably shouldn’t be surprised. Always did make her own decisions.”

The look he gives Shanks lingers, but the glare doesn’t cut with the same sharpness this time.

Garp looks at the baby then, still cooing softly, her little arms reaching, but Shanks’ hair isn’t as long as her mother’s, and there’s nothing to offer purchase for her wilful curiosity.

“She’s quiet,” Garp observes. Then, a grey brow arching, “You sure she’s yours?”

Shanks looks to Makino, having come back with a tray full of empty plates. “That joke is less funny coming from other people.” Then to Garp, “But don’t be fooled, she screams like a banshee. A very cute banshee, but still.”

A fleeting smile touches Garp’s hard features, before it’s gone. His eyes are still on the baby, and Shanks recognises that look — has felt the same feeling, like a snare curling, tender and damning around the roots of his heart. Her mother’s legacy, that; just as deceptively innocent, with that beckoning smile and song-like laughter.

“Want to hold her?” Shanks asks Garp then, and that hard gaze lifts sharply back to his. “I should probably do some work, before the missus decides I’m not worth what she’s paying me for my hard labour.”

“Which would be nothing,” Makino gets in, slipping by him to put two plates of food down on the counter.

“You referring to what you’re paying him, or the hard labour he’s supposedly doing?” Yasopp asks, stopping by the bar to pick up the plates.

“Both,” she quips, before making a face at their daughter as she moves past, prompting a wide little smile that steals Shanks’ focus away from coming up with a clever comeback.

When he finally drags his eyes back up, Garp is still watching, hesitation writ across his face with a severe frown, and for a moment Shanks wonders if he might decline the offer, but then he grumbles something that sounds like wary assent.

Stepping around the bar, Shanks moves to hand over the baby, and wonders if that twinge of reluctance will ever let go, or if it’s just the fate of every new and enamoured parent.

For his size and rough-around-the-edges manners, Garp handles the transition with surprising ease, the small shape of her tucked into a broad arm that makes the contrast look almost comical. She makes a noise when Shanks draws back, but then her eyes lock onto the face looking down at her, and stay, quietly enraptured.

“She’s a wee thing,” Garp says then, roughly, carefully shifting his grip on the baby. Something like a smile lingers at the corner of his mouth, seeming to come almost despite himself.

“She’s sturdier than she looks,” Shanks says, with a glance at Makino, busy moving between the tables, collecting plates and glasses. “A lot like her mother, that way.”

A low sound of agreement, but Garp hasn’t lifted his eyes from the baby, fussing a little in the blanket wrapped around her, arching her back, but his grip remains steady. For a moment, his eyes seem far away; years and seas.

“You know,” Garp says, after a lull. He plucks at the blanket, and doesn’t look at Shanks. “The only other times I’ve held a baby in this bar, I’ve been handing one over.”

The remark holds more tenderness than a man like Garp should readily manage, and enough old grief that it turns his voice low and grating. But the baby doesn’t flinch at the sound, only gives a tiny little gurgle and smacks her lips, and Garp’s whole expression caves.

“Times change,” Shanks says, and feel the truth of that in his bones. Their bar, choked-full of retired pirates, and the bright, buttery light spilling unhindered in through the windows, along with the sea.

Their daughter smiles then — that small, enchantingly gummy thing that has no care for the past, and what used to be in it. And with a glance at Shanks, there’s none of the old accusation in Garp’s gaze, the one that’s been trained on the cabin boy, the pirate captain, the mischief-maker that had interfered in so many lives connected to his own; his grandson’s, his almost-daughter’s. And it’s not accusation that takes in the little girl that came of it — who belongs here, between these walls; a pirate’s daughter, maybe, but this world will not so readily condemn her for it, as it once would.

And, “Yeah,” Garp says with a rough, affectionate laugh. It prompts a giggle, and the laugh rises, louder, pushing up under the ceiling, and for a brief moment, Shanks hears Roger in the sound; that effortless ease that had never flinched at shifting currents, only revelled in them, as Garp adds with a rumbling sigh,

“They have that.”

 

—

 

Garp makes a point of stopping by, after that.

He always calls in advance, and Shanks always counters with the suggestion that he’s doing it to give them the chance to wrap up whatever illegal business they’re all running out of Fuschia’s port (Garp never really laughs at that joke, and Shanks is almost inclined to believe that it’s exactly what he’s doing). But there’s little in the way of illegal business, at least not counting Ben’s tobacco prices, which are about as ridiculous as his burgeoning reputation, but at least now there’s more than melons and windmills to Fuschia’s once-humble renown.

There are also more ships coming into port than there used to be, and although there are few of East Blue’s residents who’ll bat an eye at the one-armed barkeep serving the drinks at the local tavern, there are those who take one step inside and look ready to turn back; usually those from abroad who’ve heard the rumours and who’ve come looking despite their better judgement. Because a former Emperor putting down roots might not lift a lot of brows in Dawn Island’s immediate vicinity, but there are those who’ll see it before they believe it (and still keep a wary distance, even after Shanks offers to pour them a strong one to better swallow their disbelief).

Garp believes it readily enough, although he gives Shanks about as much grief as Ben does for his barkeeping skills (“okay, but I’d like to see either of you polish a glass one-handed,  _then_  we’ll talk,” Shanks counters, “and I look hotin this apron, don’t even try convincing me that I don’t”), and it’s a truce that grows easier with every visit, any lingering awkwardness smoothened by the little boy running to greet him at the docks, searching his pockets for gifts, and the girl who is nothing but smiles and laughter in his arms (“at least this one didn’t get the hair,” Garp says dryly, even as he sighs, “but the laugh, god help me…”)

It takes a while before Shanks stops suggesting they take to the sea whenever there’s a phone call, a gurgling laugh from the girl on his arm rising in accompaniment, always ready to indulge his schemes. And when their daughter is old enough to vocally declare her desires for the sea and the swashbuckling lifestyle to her long-suffering grandfather, Shanks can only grin and profess his poorly feigned innocence.

Of course, Garp doesn’t believe him for a second, but then he’s probably right not to. Because it’s true what they say, long-retired or not— 

Once a pirate, always a pirate.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this setting is a little different than the future I give them in Shanties, since they settle in Fuschia and not Makino's island in the New World, but no matter the place, it's always the same family — and I always headcanon that Shanks' crew just settles down wherever he does; Ben will have his tobacco farm.


End file.
